Silent Hill: Broken Nightmare
by Arrested-Snow
Summary: This story follows a boy named Lee Fox, who gets trapped in realistic dreams on an almost nightly basis. This time, he's become trapped in a nightmare mimicking his Silent Hill video games.
1. Chapter 1

**Day One**

::Beep Beep, Beep Beep, Beep Beep,::

"Gwar…" I mumbled, slapping my alarm off. I always hate the incessant beeping of it. Not as much as Midgets alarm, but still.

I groggily slid out of bed, taking a brief moment to look around before shuffling out my bedroom door on a quest to pee. Seconds after stepping out into the hallway, I shuffled back into my room. Peeing would have to wait until after I confirmed what I have just now noticed. Which was that my walls were devoid of every picture of Kay and my other friends, every poster I had ever bought, and every picture Midget had ever drawn for me. Not to mention that my room was for all intents and purposes, neat. And I only had one clock.

Oh yeah, peeing would defiantly wait.

The first thing I did was sigh, deeply. I wasn't in the mood for a Dream, at all. As I ran my hands over the dust-free environment this version of me called home, I began to assess my current situation.

"Fantastic." I mumbled to myself. "Well…How old am I this time?"

I stumbled my way to the bathroom to check my appearance, sub sequentially taking the time to indeed piss. I can only guess that kidney failure is as real in those places as here, and didn't want to take any chances. After "eating a sandwich", (inside joke), I checked the mirror.

"I look, like me! Somewhat." I said.

Somewhat meaning I had zero facial hair. That and my off-blue locks were now their normal brown and cut relatively short. I still had enough hair for an "emo-flip", but only if I put effort into it.

I frowned at my image and shook my head. While I still had two earrings, the skull stud replaced by a silver hoop with a bull symbol on it, my reflection wasn't telling me my current age. I've always looked a little older than I should, and at the moment I looked 22. I was a significant less, chubby, than normal. But that doesn't really matter.

I made my way back to my room and opened the drawer on my desk where I keep my, for a lack of a better word, effects. Rings and shit. This is one way for me to tell who is currently my friend in these dreams, because my everyday outfit is composed of things I have gotten from my friends.

I looked inside. There was the studded bracelet of Beth's, and the spiked one that belonged to Poot. I had Midgets ring, Travis' wallet and Jared's money clip. I also had a small GIR patch that Kate had once pawned off on me. I breathed a sigh of relief. At least I had the same social group. A quick look at my drivers license showed that I was actually younger than my real age. Nineteen. I shook the age difference off and checked the current time and date on my computer. Then I checked it again.

9:05, Thursday, the 25th of January 2007? Wait, that would mean in this world I was born a year later? I shook my head again. At least the date was consistent. I've had worse.

"Oh shit, it's 9? Wait, do I even have college here?" I wondered aloud.

A quick scan of my room showed no backpack. No backpack means no college. Unless it was in my car. A distinct possibility, so I tossed on a pair of boots and made my way out to the back porch, throwing open the storm door and trudging out into:

A warm, sunny day.

I blinked in the sunlight, confused at the weather. It felt like Fall, in the sense that all the trees were still dead. Apparently global warming knows no dimension. Regardless, I continued my adventure to my car only to find that it was just as neat as my room. I began to wonder in the Kate in the real world would be happy about not having to clean this car. Nevertheless, there was no backpack. Or Mook. (Mook is the bear on my dashboard that I talk to sometimes). Interestingly enough, my right fender was not dented. My car was perfect in every aspect. No sign that I was ever in an accident. Which means either I never went on that first date with Beth, which wouldn't explain why I had the bracelet she bought me, OR this worlds Lee had enough common sense to not try and take her to the movies in a snowstorm.

I was starting to loath my alter self.

Now at a loss for what to do next, I went back into my room. It was 9:15, and I was worried I should be somewhere. Though it seemed this worlds Lee would have a calendar somewhere. Or if he had a job, a uniform neatly pressed somewhere. While I looked for these things, I wondered how an organized Lee would have the friends I do now.

"Maybe they're just as neat." I mumbled.

I talk to myself a lot.

I finally uncover the calendar I knew I would have; complete with shit I needed to do during the week. From what I could tell, no I didn't go to college. And that today I had free. Within 5 minutes, I had made a mess in my room and was eating Coco Pebbles and watching Dharma and Greg. It was the only thing I could find at nine in the morning. None of that mattered once my phone rang.

And I don't mean my cell phone vibrated off my desk. I mean an actual phone I had overlooked started ringing. It was an old style touchtone with a cord, with the kind of receiver I actually liked. Alter-Lee had taste.

I began to merely dislike him.

I reached for the receiver and then stopped, deciding to pull a Tyler Durden instead. Meaning I let the phone ring out, then picked up the phone and hit star69. Still crunching my cereal, the other end picked up.

"Hello?"

"Hey." I said, muffled. "You called?"

"You know I hate when you do that. Why don't you ever pick up the phone at first?" The voice said.

Wow, can my subconscious call it, or what? I kinda recognized the voice, but didn't want to ask, deciding to play along instead.

"I never pick up my phone, you know that. What's up?" I asked.

"I got a weird email."

"Fantastic." I said. "I took a piss this morning. I was gonna call you, but it didn't seem as important as getting an email."

I rock the proverbial Casbah when it comes to sarcasm.

"This is serious." The voice said. "It's from D."

Wait, D?

"Jared!" I suddenly shouted into the phone. Which I'm guessing was slightly out of character.

"Yeah… Who did you think it was?"

I thought as fast as I could. "No one. I knew it was you." If this guy was anything like my Jared, he'd forget anything with a simple subject change. "What's this about an email?"

"Huh?" I heard him ask. "Oh, right. It's from D."

Called another one. I'm on a roll.

"It says she's on her sisters laptop and that her brother made her drive the three of them out into the boondocks and now her car broke down." He said with a slight worried tone.

Several things weren't adding up, like Nicole owning a laptop and D having a car. But in a world where I had my life planned out months in advance, (Dentist appointment, March 6th), I was guessing anything was possible.

"Ok. So, go get her." I said bluntly. Ah, a classic Lee, You-just-asked-me-a-stupid-question, answer.

"I can't." A classic Jared answer. Vague with zero explanation.

"Why's that?"

"Because my dad tried to replace my fuel line and almost blew up half my car." He muttered angrily.

A classic Jared excuse. If this was a dream, it was oddly accurate.

I leaned back in my chair, pulling at the cord. "So you need my help, then."

"The town is like, an hour and a half away. I'll pay for your gas." Jared said almost matter-of-factly, like I was about to ask.

I took a glance at my online account. Luckily, I had the same numbers. "That's ok, I can handle a tank or two." I said with a grin. Let's just say Alter-Lee was WAY better with money than me.

Now I was only insulted at the thought of him.

"Really?" Jared asked. "Captain Frugal is paying for his own gas?"

I was more surprised that Jared knew the word 'frugal'. But I wasn't one to let myself slip now.

"What are friends for, right?"

"Right." He said. "See you in a bit then? Peace out." And then he hung up.

Sparing the details of it all, I threw on my effects, a pair of jeans and my Spiderman hoody and was out the door. The drive over to his house was relatively enjoyable, as far as driving goes. It was just the usual 15-minute drive I always take to his house, nothing happened.

When I got there, I wasted no time just walking into the house and making my way to the living room where Jared sat staring at his computer next to Kate, who was flipping through random channels on his TV.

"Hey, Wingus." I said, patting his shoulder as I plopped down next to him on the couch.

He tilted his head at me. "What?"

Damn habits. I shook my head. "Nothing." Subject change again. "You gotta map to this place?"

"Huh?" He asked. "Oh, yeah."

"So what's the place she's at called?" I asked him.

"I don't know, I just have an address." He said with a shrug. "It's 117 Nathan Ave, Paleville."

Nathan Ave? Where the hell had I heard that from before?

"So she's in Paleville?" I asked.

He shrugged again. "She said it's either Paleville, or the town just before that. All she knows is the street and number."

Something wasn't adding up. I knew those names, but couldn't place them for shit.

"What's Kate doing here?"

"She's very bored and was wondering if she could join you two on your adventure." Kate suddenly said, all without actually moving or ceasing her channel flip.

"Um, yes she can?" I offered.

"She's thrilled." Kate muttered.

Fantastic. Alter-Lee had apparently switched personalities with Kate. I was about to have an intense battle of wits when Jared interjected.

"Could we leave, like, now?" He asked.

I sighed, backing down from the opportunity to be sarcastic with Happy-Little-Kate. "Yeah, man." I was slightly annoyed, but understanding. He needed help, and was worried.

I don't like condensing a 90-minute drive into a paragraph. But I don't have a choice, cos I don't think anyone wants to read about various nose-pickings or a Weird Al song that got played one too many times. Three note worthy things did happen, though. The first was when I got a look at the map Jared had. The road was taking us North. So far North we had to border a lake to get to Paleville. The second was that the closer we got to Nathan Ave, the foggier it got. The third was the feeling that I had done this already. Nevertheless, I was still rather chipper when we pulled into the final rest stop.

I had to pee, rather bad, so it was into the restroom for me. A badly weathered one, at that. It looked like a tornado had hit it. Seven times. This didn't stop me from peeing, just stopped me from using a stall. As I started to leave, I caught glimpse of myself in a mirror. Staring at my face, I suddenly felt terribly uneasy. Sick to my stomach.

"Where have I gone this time?" I asked my reflection. "And why does this look so damn…familiar?"

"Lee!" I heard Kate shout from outside.

I abandoned my reflection and went back out into the early afternoon fog. "What?"

"Dude, look." Jared said, shoving something under my nose.

"Gah!" I yelled, swatting away the dark object. "What the hell?!"

"It's Chii!" He yelled, waving the object.

My eyes finally focused on a beat-to-shit Chobits doll in Jared's right hand. It was Chii, alright. D's Chii.

"I found it over there." He said, pointing at a path that lead away from the rest stop, down near the lake. "I think she's down there."

"Plausible." I said, eyeing the path. It was too narrow for my Jeep, which I really didn't like for some reason.

"Less talk, more D finding." Kate said. "I want to leave."

"Yeah, yeah." I said, waving at her.

Jared took off down the path, followed closely by Kate with me ambling down the path somewhere in the back. Normally I don't mind the fog, or being on a strange wooded path. Except, I knew I had already done it before.

"Well." I said.

"Well, what?" Jared asked.

I shook my head. "There's a well nearby."

Jared looked at me funny and kept walking. But after 5 minutes, he almost walked straight into an old stone well in a short pavilion.

"Woah, you called that." Kate muttered.

"Wait do you know where we are?" Jared asked quickly.

"Fells like it." I shrugged.

He nodded. "Cept we've never been here before."

Which we both knew, couldn't be true. If we recognized it, then why couldn't we place the name? It was almost like we both had the same idea, but refused to admit it.

"Graveyard…" Jared mumbled after a few more minutes of walking.

Sure enough, there was a set of wrought iron gates and a large stone wall in front of us leading to a sea of headstones shrouded in the misty fog.

My eyes grew wide. Suddenly, I knew exactly where I was. I could hear Jared mumbling something. I didn't know what, but I knew he had guessed it, too. Nathan Ave, The Rest Stop, and the well and graveyard. The town before Paleville was:

"Hey!" Kate suddenly broke my thoughts. "There's someone in there, in the graveyard."

Peering through the gate, I could see a shadowed figure kneeling at a headstone. There was crying, female crying.

"Angela…" I whispered to myself. "No…god no.."

"Maybe it's D!" Kate exclaimed, reaching for the gate handle.

"No!" I shouted, pulling her away from the entrance. "It's not, trust me."

"What? But…" Kate started, but Jared cut her off.

"I hear something." He said, mostly to himself, before jogging up a nearby path that led into the woods farther. I charged after him, dragging Kate with me. The closer we got to Jared, the louder a roaring sound grew. It grew until it was all around us, but was sounding a lot less animal and more like…like…

"Is that a chainsaw?" Kate asked.

Sure enough, we were all standing around that was embedded in a thick log, left running. The chain was clearly caught in the wood, and the jam was causing all the noise and a lot of smoke. Jared pushed the stop on the chainsaw, coughing slightly and waving smoke out of his face.

"Who the hell leaves a chainsaw in a log?" Kate asked both of us. "How disrespectful to your too—Oh my god." She stopped talking, covering her mouth with her hands.

Kate had seen what Jared was staring at on the log. What was pooled around where the chainsaw was stuck.

Blood.

"We have to leave, now." Jared said. No, ordered. And he was right.

Suddenly, I wasn't just in a Dream World. I was in trouble. Big trouble. And so were they.

"What about D?" Kate asked.

"There was no D. She was never here." I said.

I pulled Kate's arm, tugging her down the path. "Jared's right. We need to leave, now!" I shouted.

We ran back down the path, even though I knew what would happen. The scenery had changed. We were suddenly pressed up against the now locked gate to the graveyard, with towering pricker bushes on either side of the path. We could see where we had first came in, now on the other side of the graveyard.

"What is this?" Kate asked. "What's going on?!"

"It already started." Jared said.

"Yeah, but we can do things the game can't, Jared. Come on, think! Climb the gate, run like hell!" I yelled. I couldn't be here. Anywhere but that town. And I would get out.

Jared effortlessly climbed the iron gates and thudded to the grass below. Kate sucked in her gut and actually slid through the bars. I, with a running start, leapt at the gate and promptly slid down. My hands wouldn't grip the metal.

"Come on!" Jared shouted.

"I can't!" I shook my head. And I wasn't about to try again. That was pointless.

"Ok, you two run back to the Rest Stop." I said, tossing Jared my keys.

"What? Wait, What is going on?!" Kate asked again.

"No, what about you?" Jared asked me.

I grinned. A fools grin. A grin that says, 'I'm about to die for you.'.

"I go through town. To Nathan Ave, then double back to the Rest Stop." I said.

"No! Not if this is real!" Jared started.

"Stop. Just trust me. I know the map better than you. This is my horror game." I said. "Now go."

"Lee.." Kate started, her voice breaking. She was getting upset, and she didn't even know why.

"Stop it. I'll be fine. Now go!" I yelled again.

This time I didn't wait for them to respond, I just turned and ran. I ran up the path, past the chainsaw, and towards a road. The fog was not ceasing, and I knew why. Because I was in that town. I was having a nightmare version of my Dreams.

I was in Silent Hill.

My feet pounded on the dirt road, echoing in every direction. My one set of feet sounded like hundreds echoing in the mist. I refused to think about it, charging onward. The dirt finally shifted to pavement, and took a steep turn uphill. I slowed to a walk against my will as I began passing abandoned cars. I had started my search for a weapon; still praying in my mind that this wasn't the real monster infested Silent Hill. I came across an abandoned cop cruiser, and in the front seat was a visible 9 mm handgun and a box of bullets. Not to the exact game specifics, but I was not about to bitch. I quickly checked to make sure the magazine was filled, then loaded a bullet and removed the safety.

"I will not need this." I said to myself.

I looked around and a street sign caught my eye. Sanders St. I kinda knew where I was. I turned left and ran down the now level street. I was in the town now, no question. If the fog was no longer an advocate of that, the corpse I passed was. A mans body, lying face down in dried blood.

"This can't be happening!" I yelled.

I continued to run until something forced me to stop. Namely it was a gigantic white wall that had the words, "No", printed on it over and over again in what looked like blood.

"Oh god…" I said to myself. I had begun shaking, and wanted to throw up. I never got the chance.

"SCREEE!"

I whirled around at the sound, and almost peed myself. For staggering towards me through the fog, was what Jared and I had dubbed an Acid Spitter on our first sight of it in the game. Acid Spitters were humanoid, and you could just see what looked like a torso, arms and a face under what can only be described as a straightjacket of its own skin. If you got too close in the game, they did what their name implied. Somehow.

"No…" I took a step back, into the wall. The Acid Spitter staggered forward again.

I raised the gun, but was shaking so hard that I dropped it. Without knowing it, I had begun to silently cry. I hadn't been this scared since I was the only second grader contemplating death and god. I couldn't shoot like this. I wanted to go home, where these things didn't exist. It screeched again, and for a brief second I realized something.

Death meant nothing to me, not here. I would just go home, not matter what. Jared and Kate were at the car by now, if not driving away. So fuck the monster, screw being scared.

A grin swept across my tear-stained face as I clenched my fist. I didn't even pause to throw off a witty one-liner, just charged. I ran full tilt at the monster, fists up, prepared to compensate a weak upper body by punching at a run. This was a mistake, because the thing jerked to the side, momentum sending me stumbling past. It quickly fire off an acid spray, that I wouldn't been seriously hurt by if I hadn't been on my knees.

"So, does that mean we're playing on hard?" I muttered.

It screeched again, almost like an answer.

"Fantastic." I grinned. "How unfortunate for—"

BLAM!

I was startled by the sudden, thunderous noise. What the hell was going on?

BLAM! BLAM!

The sound powered through the alley twice more, and both times the Acid Spitter shuddered. Violently. It was at that time I noticed the blood on the pavement. My blood? No, the Acid Spitters. Wait, it was bleeding?

It sank to its knees, bellowing from its innermost depths.

"Kick it! Finish it off before it blows!"

I really didn't need to be told twice. I remembered what happened when they died sometimes. I brought my leg up, pushing it deep into the soft male-deformed flesh of the Acid Spitter. It groaned, and fell down completely. I jumped to my feet and quickly brought my foot down onto its head. With a terrifying screech and a violent twitch, it stopped moving. It had died, and blood was already starting to pool around it.

Breathing heavily, I turned my gaze away from it to the end of the alley, where the gunshots and voice had come from. Trying to peer through the fog at the figure. Who was it?

"Did you really think I'd leave you?" A familiar voice yelled.

No way.

I ran down the street towards the wall, at there he was. An out of breath Jared, holding a dead still handgun, with Kate clinging to his sides for dear life and sobbing.

"The person in the graveyard." He said. "It was another of those things." He motioned towards the dead monster. "I had to carry her back here, but I couldn't let you go through here alone."

"Why did you carry her?" I asked.

"The monsters are scaring the crap out of her. She won't move, or stop crying." He said, sinking to his knees. "Actually, I'm kinda exhausted right now." He mumbled.

With some effort I pried Kate off his side, only to have her cling to mine. It didn't matter. What did was that we were tired, trapped and confused. We had to rest where we were for now.

It was going to be a long night.

**Day Two**

I remember we were attacked twice more before morning. I never slept, because that was more of my own nature. Years of drinking the East Coasts general supply of Dr. Pepper has turned my adrenaline into a substance that rivals crack and speed. If I get worked up enough, sleep no longer becomes an option. Jared managed intervals of naps, and Kate finally managed to cry herself asleep. None of us really talked much. I know I didn't because I couldn't think of anything. Jared would ask me if anything was different when he woke up, not much more.

At some point during the night, a halogen bulb in a street lamp that was sticking out of the wall flickered to life and caused us all to jump at first. But it was just on a timer, like a normal city. It sent waves of off white light cascading through the alley, granting us sight.

I had kept my back to the wall most of the night, alternating between sitting and standing. I refused to walk away from it, or take my gaze away from the fog that plagued and blocked my vision. As far as I could tell, it hadn't raised at all during the night. But the current shitty weather was really not my concern.

Jared offered me the gun every time he felt tired, but I wouldn't take it. After the rather pathetic display I had showed myself earlier, I didn't feel up to touching the firearm anymore. So when the second Acid Spitter decided to stagger down the alley, I kicked him awake. This battle was a lot less epic than the first one, consisting of Jared shooting until the clip was empty and the monster had stopped moving. This happened mostly because Jared was still half asleep and couldn't concentrate until the creature let out a screech.

"Go make sure it's dead." He said groggily. He couldn't stand, because Kate was curled up in his lap.

There was only two times I bothered moving. This was one of them. I shuffled forward through the alley towards its unmoving body, which was thankfully closer than the body of the first one. I looked down at the pooling blood and then up at Jared. With all the humor I could muster at the moment, I pulled my leg back and in the true fashion of the games, gave the creature a finishing kick. I heard Jared laugh from where I was, and it made me feel slightly better.

The two of us were at a slight advantage being here, and by slight, I mean barely any. We knew the back story to Silent Hill, and that people who sinned were sent there. That the monsters were a representation of your sins, and that everyone experienced a different Silent Hill. And we weren't positive that these things we knew were facts.

Night seemed to last forever, and it was not because I had nothing to do. I've spent nights staring at my ceiling before that pass in five minutes. This was different.

I checked my watch. 3:45. "Great." I mumbled to myself. Almost morning at least.

I pushed off the wall and stretched. Jared and Kate were still sleeping. In a fit of boredom, I made my way to an abandoned car that was parked on the side of the road about halfway between the second dead Acid Spitter and us. Looking at the car reminded me of my own. I decided then that tomorrow we would make our way back to the Jeep and leave. I knew it wouldn't work that way, that something would happen to halt our exit, but I refused to admit it to myself.

The car was a beat up '97 Oldsmobile that looked gutted. At one point it had been painted a dark blue, but was now covered in rust spots like it was diseased. A leper-mobile. I chuckled to myself at my own bad pun, and hands in my pockets; I put my foot against the side of the car. And that's when I heard it.

Huhh... huhh... huhh..

It sounded like something was gasping for breath, or trying to breath with something in its mouth. I kept as still as I possibly could, looking around slowly for the source of the noise. It was then, that I could see it. A figure hunched over the dead body of the first Acid Spitter. The fog blurred the upper half of its body, but the light cut through the bottom half, revealing a set of jowls in the process of tearing into the carcass. My mind drew a blank as I tried to remember this particular creature.

CLANG!

The sound of metal hitting the pavement rang through the alley. The rust around one of the cars hubcaps had finally given way, sending it crashing onto the ground. With a grunt, the monster whipped its head up to look at me. It was one of those brief moments where the only thought I had was:

Oh, shit...

The monster began walking forward on all fours, and that was when I realized it was one of the dogs. The dogs were, well, dogs. Dogs that looked like they had been in fires. They had no fur, and their skin looked melted to their bodies. The skin was drawn tight over their eyes, but it didn't mean they couldn't see.

I backed up a step, and began to yell for Jared but stopped. Because he wasn't awake. The hubcap fell five minutes ago, and Jared reloaded the gun clip after he had emptied it earlier. He would have had to cock the gun again. The dog was in plain sight and in range of the gun, no question. He would have shot already. I was on my own.

I gritted my teeth as the dog inched closer, now emitting an audible growl. My head swiveled wildly as I searched for something to fight with: a wrench, a pipe, a tire iron in the car. But there wasn't anything, because this wasn't a game. I got lucky with the gun, but my other items would be harder to find.

Ironically, I found myself saying the stereotypical line you hear people in TV and movies say all the time.

"Good dog."

Like it was listening. Or was anything but a bad dog at this point.

Without warning it leaped at me with an impressive kick off the ground. This monster was closing a span of ten feet, rapidly. For some reason my mind slid back to a conversation I once had with Jared about how fast I think in a heated situation. He said he thought that in a fight, I wouldn't think as fast as I normally do which could be several coherent thoughts in a few seconds. Almost in an act of defiance of him, I grabbed the handle of the drivers side door of the Oldsmobile and wrenched it open.

Ha. Me: One, Jared: Zero.

If I had paid attention instead of thinking I would have seen that the window on the door was down. Which was where the dog was headed like a hellish missile. With a loud crunch, the dog got caught in the window by his drop rate. The crunch came from the door almost falling off because of its weight.

What do you mean I lost my point due to a technicality? I stopped it!

I turned and ran down the alley as it began kicking furiously until the door did fall off. Once its legs were touching the ground, it managed to scamper free and take off after me. I remember jumping onto the top of a dumpster before it managed to bite me and the momentum of its miss sent it tumbling towards the end of the alley. For two seconds I thought I had screwed my friends until it jumped back up and began to walk back to me.

I scrambled as high as I could on the lid. I was not built to outrun a dog. I couldn't run, period. Not because of my weight so much, it was just really awkward for some reason. The dog began to circle the dumpster, still growling.

"Fantastic. I'm going to be the loser who gets killed by a regular creature." I muttered to myself. "Big fat guy dies first. Whoot!" I said with a nervous laugh.

_"You're not that fat, but you're defiantly heavier than say, your friends over there."_

I paused and looked around. A sardonic voice with a slightly British accent.

"Mook?" I asked aloud.

The monster barked in response.

"I'm not talking to you!" I yelled. Yeah, I was getting into an argument with the thing that wanted to eat me.

_"You've got a kick that you claim can break car locks, and you can't stop a dog?"_

I didn't have time for voices. "That's not a car! Besides, my kick is not strong enough to hurt that."

_"If you put your weight into it, it would be."_

I'm in serious danger, and my personal voice is making a fat joke? I really didn't have time for this. Besides, the dog was beginning to lose interest with a prey it couldn't reach, and was starting to sniff around for something easier.

My eyes shifted to my friends, who were asleep about 30 feet away. Not them. Anything but the—and in the middle of that thought, I figured out what Mook meant.

I opened the dumpster and grabbed a bottle off a bag of garbage. Bending over gave the dog a second wind, and it took a shot at biting my arm. I jumped back and the lid slammed down on its head. Dazed for a second, it shook its head and growled at me again.

"No no, I'm too difficult to reach, remember?"

Luckily, I'm patient. It took about ten minutes for the monster to begin looking for something within its reach. When its meaty little head swiveled towards the Acid Spitters, I swung my arm back and threw the bottle as hard as I could towards the opposite side of the alley. With a crash the dogs attention was now on the bottle, and as anti-climactic as it was, I slid off the dumpster and jumped squarely on the back of its neck.

Hey, they can't all be epic battles.

With a sickening pop and a crack, the beast stopped moving. There was no pool of blood, but it was clearly dead. True to my own sarcastic and sometimes sadistic tendencies, I walked all the way to the hubcap and, out of breath and sore, dragged it back to Jared sleeping figure and repeatedly began dropping it against the pavement until he woke up with such a start he knocked Kate out of his lap and she woke up.

"You sleep too soundly." I mumbled, sliding to a sitting position next to them. I wouldn't say anything else until daybreak.

Kate didn't sleep or talk the rest of the night. Or cry. Perhaps she was done? No, this was the same girl who freaked one time I made the joke that all of our families had vanished. Her life was at stake, shouldn't she be more upset?

_"She's not the same. Similar, maybe, but these two are as good as strangers to you."_

Those words that rang in my head stayed there.

Day finally broke with a resonating and foggy, 'Who gives a rats ass?'. We staggered to our feet and steadily began to leave the alley. There really wasn't anything rather interesting about it, until about three-fourths of the way out. We came in contact with something we had forgotten was here.

A dead body.

It was different this time, because it wasn't a monster. It was some guy in a blue jacket face down on the pavement with his arms outstretched towards a white house on the opposite side of the road. We stared between the man and the house. It was strange, because the house didn't particularly stand out. The man looked like he had been running towards it when something, probably expected if he was running, had caused him to lose his head. Literally.

_"Who runs to an unmarked house?"_ Mook asked softly in my head.

I turned around, looking behind the man. There wasn't anything over there that stood out either, except a mailbox that had its flag up. You know, the little red flag for outgoing mail? Tentatively I walked to it and pulled the worn metal door open. Inside was a folded up piece of paper, what looked like a folding knife and a lighter. I touched my left pocket out of habit. I could feel my cell phone, but not my lighter. I pulled the little silver object out and twirled it. It had the same feel and look as mine. Silently, I slid it into my pocket and pulled out the paper and unfolded it. It was a map of Silent Hill. Something that momentarily surprised me was the fact that some things were circled and crossed out. Like, Blue Creek Apartments was crossed out, but the St Stella Church was circled. This was because everybody experienced their own Silent Hill, and had to visit certain places. The church didn't pertain to us, so I folded the map back up and put it in the mailbox. I stared at the knife for a minute before hesitantly taking it and sliding it into my pocket as I turned, shutting the mailbox at the same time. I've always been proud of my slight of hand. But I was just playing. I had no reason to hide it.

"What was in it?" Jared asked. He and Kate, who was determinately staring off at a tree in the opposite direction of the body, had stayed next to the man.

"A map I couldn't read." I shrugged, continuing up the street.

I guess I did.

It took another hour and forty-five minutes to trek our way right down Lindsey street, right again onto the Vachss service road, and a final right onto Nathan Ave to finally bring us to the rest stop. Considering the distance and the fact that I tend to amble, it wasn't too bad. Our scenery was stained by more dead bodies and the occasional cryptic, "Turn Back" or "You're going to die" that was written in red on buildings we passed. We did pass a few monsters, getting attacked only twice by dogs that were too close for us to just sneak past. Things were looking rather grim in that sense. A 9 mm doesn't hold a lot of bullets, and Jared had reloaded three times. I thought. I should have paid more attention, but I did know he was running out of bullets. At this point in the game the main character would have found a melee weapon first, usually in the form of a pipe or an unusually hefty piece of wood. Sadly, there really wasn't anything like that in reach.

To my surprise, we finally reached the Jeep. It was still sitting, untouched in the parking lot of the rest stop. For some reason, I had expected it to not be there. We walked around to the passenger side and I unlocked it, pulling the front seat forward and helping Kate in. It was then up close did I notice her face was wet. She had been silently crying? The entire time?

"We're going home, Kid." I said. I had meant it to be uplifting, but it came out half assed.

Jared slid into the car without a word. I made my way around the car to my side, when something through the fog briefly held my attention. It was the outline of an SUV in the fog. Was someone else here? I shook it off and climbed inside. Then, something else happened that nearly scared the piss out of all of us.

With a deep, unexpected and almost animal roar, the car started.

Breathing a sigh of relief, I threw it in reverse and dropped the E-Brake, backing up and starting to drive towards the tunnel we had first come through to get to Silent Hill when I slammed on the brakes.

"You've got to be kidding me." Jared whispered.

"This, it's like an illusion, right?" Kate asked.

Right in front of us was the answer to why the car was still in the parking lot. Why it started, even. The tunnel was blocked. No, it wasn't blocked, but filled. To anyone who ever had toy cars, we could all remember cramming a shit load into some sort of container because out mom told us to pick them up. It was like that. Someone had taken, hundreds of tankers and tractor-trailers and had literally crammed them all in the tunnel.

I slammed it into reverse, and spun my Jeep around in as much a 180 I could manage.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Jared yelled.

"Leaving." I said calmly as I slid the stick into drive, and drove onto Nathan Ave.

"We can't! We're trapped here, where the hell are you going?"

"I'm going straight on Nathan Ave. I'm going to skim the outskirts of Silent Hill until we reach the other side."

"What if that doesn't work, Lee?" Kate's voice softly rose up from behind us.

"It has to."

"That's not an answer, man!" Jared yelled again.

"No shit! But we're doing something no Silent Hill person ever has!" I snapped in protest.

"What?!"

"Driving away." I muttered, pushing the pedal to the floor. "They can't hurt us in here! It's the ultimate weapon. They try and kill us, we run them over."

"Man, you better be right." He said, shaking his head.

I was acting like a child, like I did every time someone tried to defy me. I was being a stubborn fool, but dammit I refused to be wrong. I couldn't be wrong, there was just no way. We had to be able to drive out. We were flying past everything we had already walked by. Monsters were turning away from us. Finally, things were beginning to look fine instead of horrible.

"Your car is squealing."

We just had to be able to leave. I wouldn't get trapped in this town!

"Dude, your car."

What?

"What?" I echoed my thoughts.

"Your car is squealing." Jared repeated.

"I don't hear it."

"Listen!" He said.

Like I had a choice. It wasn't like I could ignore his request. So I listened. And drove. And then, listened some more. Eventually I began to hear a sharp piercing squeal. It was soft to me, and I had heard it somewhere before.

"The hell…" I muttered. "The tires? Or the axel?"

"I have no idea." Jared said, rolling his window down.

"Lee…" Kate said suddenly.

"In a minute." I muttered. What the hell was that sound?

"Lee, I think you need to see this." She said. Her voice sounded worried, almost panicked.

"Jared, see what she wants." I mumbled.

A few seconds passed and suddenly Jared grabbed my arm.

"Dude, either speed up or turn off this road." He said.

"What?!" I shouted.

"Behind us!" Kate screamed.

Suddenly the Jeep rocked forward from the force of something hitting the back end, and there was a mix of cursing, grunting and more screaming from the three of us. I decided that maybe, I should look in the rearview mirror.

It's funny how fine has a habit of blowing up in your face.

Racing behind us, charging through the fog was a monster we had never seen before. And subsequently is the reason I will never bitch about the Silent Hill characters just getting in a car and driving away.

They were the size of SUVs, looked like them too. They were covered in flesh, stretched tight over a car like frame. Inside the vehicle, there was what looked like an Acid Spitter fused with the front seat. Behind that was a horrible pulsing red object, much like a giant heart. And every time the wheels completed a rotation, they emitted a horrible squealing noise. Almost like it was constantly in pain. I stared in horror at the three Hell Cars chasing us. And I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream in a fit of frustration and pain. Was this really happening? Could it? Was this hell really fit for every possible escape? What the fuck, man?! What did I do, WE do to deserve this?!

Suddenly Kate leaned forward, screaming and pointing in front of me. "Look out!"

My eyes readjusted on the road in front of me just in time to see the two Demon Dogs disappear under my front end. The resulting bump forced my car to a hard left and almost flipped my tiny Jeep. By wrenching the wheel, I managed somehow to right the car.

"That's one way to kill them." Jared said with a nervous laugh.

"Kill them?" I asked. "Kill THEM!" I yelled, pointing at the Hell Car pulling up on our right.

"How?!"

"I want you to inject these with a poison that will spread, slowly but surely causing its whole species to eventually die out over time." By god, even in a panic situation I still had it. "Shoot them!"

He cocked the gun, sliding the window down. "How bout I start with the tires?"

I thought for two seconds. "NO!" I pulled his shoulder back, knocking him down into the seat.

"What?!"

"The wheels have to be a thick bone under the flesh. It won't deflate like a tire! Thin rubber, big ass wheel well!" I shouted.

"How would you know?" Kate's voice echoed from the back.

"I don't, it just seems to make the most sense! How else would the weight be held up?" I had to yell over the squealing. It was unbearable.

"He's got a point." Jared agreed.

Sweet. Now we're even.

"The driver, then?" He asked, almost smugly. After turning back to the window, he jumped. The Hell car was now even with the Jeep. It took two seconds to recover, but he pulled up his gun and fired point blank at the Acid Spitter.

No, the cars didn't have windows.

But nothing happened anyways. The car didn't shudder, made no sound, and didn't falter. In fact, it sped up. Rather quickly, easily pulling a car length in front of me and moving directly in front of the Jeep. Without warning, it suddenly stopped moving, forcing me to veer sharply right and slam on the brakes. The end result was a 180 power slide into an iron gate, promptly stopping my car.

"Where are we?" I asked groggily.

"Rosewater Park." Kate said after a second, pointing to a sign.

Fuck. We weren't even halfway down Nathan Ave.

But that wasn't our biggest problem. The three cars were now positioned in a semi circle around the car, a soft squeal still evident over the roar of my engine.

"Try to shoot the heart, thing." I offered.

"Where's that?" He asked.

"Behind the driver. Way in the back."

He made a move to lean out the window and take aim when a cracking sound stopped us all. The hood of the center Hell Car had split horizontally, like a giant mouth. Except, it wasn't a mouth. Housed under the hood was not an engine, or a tongue, but half a person. It looked like a Wall Crawler from SH4. It was the same flesh and vein substance as the rest of the car, connected by the hip to the car. It reached towards us and gave off a screech almost as terrible as the squealing tires.

It was funny how fine had stopped blowing up in my face, and was now being repeatedly shot.

"I'm…I'm gonna try shooting, that." Jared muttered slowly as the open Hell Car rolled forward slightly.

"No, get out." I said without taking my eyes off it. "We'll go into the park, they're too small to follow."

Jared stared at me in disbelief. "You want to run?"

I shot him a similar look. "You'd rather fight them with a dwindling supply of bullets?"

His door clicked open rather quickly. "The park, you said?"

He slid out of the car, ripping his seat forward and pulling Kate out with one arm. He lifted her and set her on the other side of the seriously dented gate I had hit, beginning to climb over himself. He looked back at me, waiting. I caught a glimpse of the Hell Cars, still easing towards my car as I went to shut the Jeep off. And then I noticed something odd. The cars weren't going after them. They were outside the Jeep, still easy prey, but none of them seemed to even notice. And that's when I realized something.

"Hey! What the hell are you doing?!" Jared screamed as I pushed the seat back down, grabbed the passenger door and slammed it shut.

I didn't say anything, turning the wheel fully to the left. I took a deep breath, cracked my knuckles, and slammed the pedal to the floor. MY tires squealed as I peeled out, speeding away from the Park. As I drove, I glanced in my rearview, confirming my suspicion. They had all peeled out after me. They were only interested in other moving cars!

"Yes!" I cheered in victory, pumping my fist skyward.

Wait a minute.

"SHIT!"

My jeep rocked again as one of the slammed my bumped. The one still had its hood raised, and I tried my best not to look at its horrible face. Without noticing I had driven across Nathan Ave and down another street, and was currently shooting past the:

"Blue Creek Apartments?!!" I screamed to myself.

I sharply turned left after the first block. I almost ran over what looked like a human girl as I turned left again, now making a B-line for Nathan Ave. Jared's window was still down, so I could hear the Hell Cars crashing into things and running over everything else. One, in an effort to try and cut me off at the turn accidentally crashed through the front of a flower shop. Hey, one down.

I pulled back onto Nathan Ave, trying to look away as I drove past a bewildered Kate and Jared who was… taking aim at me? Was he that desperate to stop me? That jackass! I was trying to help THEM! Regardless, I banked another hard left and drove quickly up Nathan Ave. I tried to ignore the shot that rang out even as I drove. I plowed onward through the fog, occasionally looking behind me. Wait a second; weren't two Hell Cars chasing me? Why was there only one now?

Getting lost in my thoughts almost caused me to kill myself. Something I'm apparently good at. I managed to slam on my brakes and skid the car off to the right as I came to the end of the road. And I mean end of the road, because the pavement and everything was gone. Replaced by a huge gaping hole that had been crudely cut into nothingness. I sat cursing and partially admiring the chasm when a sharp squealing sound caught my attention. Apparently the Hell Cars couldn't see through the fog any better than I could, because at full speed, the last car shot straight over the edge and into oblivion. I had slumped back into my seat in exasperation. But I still had one thing on my side, not that it helped much. That was the knowledge that the monsters apparently were no more aware of sudden changes to the town that we were.

My peace was short lived as four more cars slowly rolled through the fog towards me. With a sadistic grin to try and trick myself into being brave, I wrenched the wheel to the left and pressed the pedal down again. Kicking up gravel and speeding into the fog, another chase was started. Without warning my radio crackled to life, and the sound of the song Bleed by Puddle of Mudd began to fill my car. Nervous laughter echoed out of my lungs at the slight irony.

"Groovy." I said with a grin. I could drive to this.

I slammed on my brakes and pulled hard to the right, waiting five seconds before slamming on the gas again. This let three cars shoot past, and I weaved in and out of the last two to go back down the road with the apartments. The last two cars somehow made the turn. In an attempt to fight back, I was going to try to make them crash. But before I could, the other three skidded around the end of the block and started speeding towards my. In a panic, I pulled to the right. So did they.

I was not in the mood for chicken.

At the last second, I turned right again and drove up on the sidewalk. There was a loud yelp and a scraping sound followed by a crash. The yelp was my fault because I ran over another dog. The crash was from two of the cars nicking each other and one of them upturning. I jerked back onto the road and begged my car to speed up as the remaining four righted and began to come after my again. In the midst of trying to figure out how to get back to my friends, I saw him.

Not him at first, but the red glow that surrounded his body. He stood in the middle of the road, surrounded by a small army of Acid Spitters and a few dogs, and the ground beneath him looked like it was a flowing shadow. I can't fully explain the wash of cold that hit me from seeing the terrifying form of him. Suddenly, everything else took a backseat to that particular monster. Time slowed down, my heartbeat became more apparent, and even the radio shut off just as quickly as it had started. Because he couldn't be beaten, could not be stopped. What stood before me, pointing at my car, was the Juggernaut of Silent Hill. He was an unstoppable punisher for those who have committed the gravest of sins. Pyramid Head.

I gripped the wheel tighter and gritted my teeth, and aimed the front end of my car at him. I wanted to bash 80 miles an hour of heavy metal into him. I wanted to crush him. I wanted to beat him, without dying myself. Common sense gripped me and I shook my head, hitting the brakes and banking left so hard I got my car up on two wheels. I fell back down hard and drove down a different street, the name eluded me then too, and I didn't care. In my rearview I could see two of the cars continue speeding towards the monsters, and two actually followed me. I could hear the screeching as the first two tried to stop, followed by a loud crash. I laughed and turned around to see if anything blew up. It may not have been my car, but something still hit them. I settled back into my seat, grinning and drove on.

"FUCK!"

And straight off the edge of another bottomed out section of pavement. Fantastic, I was going to die because I wasn't watching where I was going. To be fair, it was foggy out. And Jared didn't say, "Drive safe." I always almost get in an accident if he doesn't say that before I drive.

Mind you, this was not what was going through my head at the time. I was busy cursing myself, and worrying that I was going to die even though I knew in the back of my mind meant I would wake up from my nightmare. My car was in the midst of a nose-dive when I saw the top of the tunnel below me. No, it was in front of me? For thirty seconds I had been careening over the edge of a bottomless ravine that had appeared in the middle of nowhere. Now I was shooting out of a different one that had materialized in the Rest Stop parking lot. Gravity restored as my car hit the pavement and bounced wildly, tossing me like a rag-doll in the front seat. I let go of the wheel to untangle the seat belt from around my neck. I looked up at the numerous tractor-trailers in the blocked tunnel rapidly closing in.

I was going to crash.

I wrenched my seat belt off and kicked my door open without pausing to think and threw my body out the door. The process of hitting the pavement and rolling to a stop was not a smooth one. It felt like someone swatted me with an oversized rock flyswatter, sending me twisting and flailing wildly through the air, then batting at me with increasingly softer blows as I tumbled. As soft as a big piece of rock can be. At some point during my fall my car had crashed into the stuffed tunnel and has exploded in what I can only guess was a gigantic fireball that had overtaken the rest of the vehicles in flames. My only solace was in knowing the two remaining Hell Cars had crashed along with my car.

I stood on shaky legs that collapsed and sent my back to the ground where I promptly emptied my stomach contents on the pavement. The force had brought tears to my eyes, and I soon began crying again. On my hands and knees near a pool of vomit and a raging inferno of burning cars, I cried and screamed in the futility of it all. Like a child who didn't want to admit that Santa Claus wasn't real or that at some point everyone had to die. I wasn't exactly Mr. Perfect, but I didn't deserve this. At what point had we gone from our biggest problems being some kid at school to fighting for our lives? Eight months ago I had a crappy girlfriend, now I was fighting to survive. This was crap.

I finally stood, still shaking, and turned towards the fire. With clenched fists I choked back my tears and let loose a silent scream that no one could hear. With heavy breaths and a glare I turned away from the fire, away from what was left of my car and began walking down the only accessible road. Since part of Nathan Ave was now missing, I started walking down the path we had first ventured down.

"My situation is not crap." I muttered to myself. "The way I'm acting is. I'm not four, and I'm not afraid. I'll play this game, and get out of here."

_"Good show."_

"Shut up, Mook." I said defiantly.

As I walked I felt less nervous, and it seemed like the fog was a little easier to see through. I made my way up to the well we had passed yesterday, this time pausing to peer inside. In Silent Hill 2, James Sunderland came upon this well and found the first save point of the game inside. I wasn't looking to document my progress, but for something to assist me. I smiled as I reached inside, pulling out a sledgehammer. Well, it was a hammer on one end. The other side held what looked like a very sharp, but wide wedge. An ax blade, almost. I needed both hands to use it, but felt comfortable holding it. I slung my weapon on my shoulder and defiantly walked the short distance to the now locked gate of the cemetery. With a grin, quick swing of the hammer and a loud clang the chain broke and the gate swung open. I stalked inside, making my way to the other gate. Not in fear of the monsters I could see amongst the headstones, but because I had better things to do. Like get back to my friends.

A shed off to my left caught my attention when a loud crash was heard from inside. I lifted my hammer and took a step towards it. I could see a shape moving inside, but more erratically than one of the Acid Spitters. The figure was darting around inside the shed, quickly, and making a lot of noise. It suddenly darted towards the door and pushed it open with a loud bang. But instead of a monster, a girl holding a wooden box came tumbling out and landed face first in the dirt. She was covered in dirt, wearing a pink flowered dress and a denim coat. Black boots scraped in the dirt as she struggled to stand. She brushed curly black hair out of her face, revealing a pair of glasses over small blue eyes. She scrambled to shove fallen items into her box, many of which I didn't get a good look at. I thought I saw her shove a digital clock in there when she finally looked up and I could see her face clearly.

"Beth?" I said aloud.

She looked like Beth, (my ex), but a smaller, younger version. I was contemplating the significance when I heard a click. Everyone knows that click, because it never fails to scare the crap out of everyone. The click from a gun cocking. I looked back down at the barrel of a shotgun that I had missed being leveled at me.

"What?" She asked, panting.

My incredible thought process led me to an extremely suave thing to say.

I pointed at the gun and looked at her. "Hey…"

Genius.

"What did you call me?" She asked again.

"I think the more important question is, 'Did I get it right?'" I said with a nervous chuckle.

She grunted and dropped the gun, deciding I wasn't worth the waste of a bullet. She went about reclaiming what was left of her items and stood, awkwardly holding an overflowing box and a shotgun. Mumbling to herself, she turned and started walking towards the gate I had just crashed.

"Hey, do you need help?" I rolled my eyes. "Beth?"

"Stop it!" She screeched and whirled around, aiming at me with one hand. "Shut up!"

I knew she couldn't possibly aim correctly like that, or recover from the shot quickly, but I wasn't about to chance it. Besides, who gets pissed at hearing their name?

"Woah. Just, relax." I raised my hands in defense.

"Emily.." She muttered, pausing to raise her gun hand up to push her glasses up.

I took a step forward. "Who's Emily?"

"ME!" She screamed, waving the gun again.

I didn't say anything. I took a few steps back and silently stared as she began mumbling about demons and finally started walking away. I watched as she stumbled off into the fog, pitying the girl slightly. She had lost her mind to the town. And why? What did she do?

"It's not fair." I thought as I wandered into the shed where she had come from. "Who decided it was alright to punish people for their past sins? And why did we have to deal with such horrors?"

Various gardening tools surrounded me, including a pickaxe and what looked like a rusty jackhammer. "They don't deal with crap like this in the Anime I watch." I brushed potting soil off the far shelf that was left from several smashed pots. My head whipped around at the sound of a roar in the distance, followed by a scream. "Edward Elric didn't have these kind of monsters. Neither does Ichigo. Hell, even the Heartless from Kingdom Hearts weren't this bad. So why do we have to do this?" I pulled the studded and spiked bracelet off my left hand, as well as the heavy studded ring. In their place, I pulled on a black gardeners glove that was on the table in front of me and put my shit back on over it. I looked around until my eyes fell on a long and partially rusted chain hanging from the ceiling. "But then again, who's to say what those monsters look like in real life? Those are cartoons with bright colors and sugar-coated animation." I had pulled the chain around my waist, making a small loop in it that I slid the pickaxe handle in. Out of instinct and a love of shiny things, I put in my pocket a short key that had "ELV1" carved in it that I had found hidden in the potting soil. I lifted a pair of heavy work boots onto the table and carefully inspected them. After finding nothing wrong with them, I kicked off my sneakers and slid my feet in them. The only reason being that boots always added to my kick.

I caught glimpse of myself in a dirty mirror as I stood fully and sighed. I was dirty, and showed signs of fatigue and wear. I also looked like I was headed off to some ass-backwards war, and in a way I was. That's when I realized that it wasn't different. I was the same as every Video Game character, every cartoon I'd ever seen. The only difference was you never watched the characters deal with the situation of monsters or demons. They just immediately adapt. That's why it seemed so scary, and alien. But the truth of it was, that my monsters weren't any different from Hollows, Heartless, or the hoards of creatures from any Final Fantasy game. They needed to be stopped, or at least moved out of my way. Because I wasn't going to die here. I was not going to succumb to the hell of Silent Hill.

And I certainly wasn't going to cry anymore.

My final thoughts were interrupted by a sudden gust of wind slamming the shed door shut which was followed by a somewhat distorted roar, like a tape skipping, from outside. I moved to the window to see a huge figure outlined in the fog that was making its way towards the shed. It looked familiar, but I broke my gaze and turned away. I didn't need to try the handle to know the door was stuck now. I began to raise the hammer to smash the knob, but stopped. After thinking for a few seconds, a grin crept across my face.

This would be the point in the movie where the camera pans to outside the shed, looking up at the door from the ground but off to the right and out of the way. There would be a slight pause, and the door would come flying off its hinges with a great splintery CRASH as it thudded into the dirt.

It's always fun to kick things.

"Awesome." I grinned, lowering my foot and stepping out of the tiny building.

I turned my attention back to the creature walking towards me. It was a little bit bigger than me, and looked like something from Resident Evil 4 that I had seen Jared fight. It was humanoid, and covered in straps. Its head looked like a big swollen pimple, and it had two long bloody blades sticking out from each hand. I knew I had seen them in a SH game, but couldn't remember their names.

I grinned. Just another monster.

At first it came right at me, but then twitched and stumbled in a different direction. It moved to the far side of the shed, twitched, but didn't move. Why wasn't it? Suddenly the image of a girl charging at one with a shotgun ,only to have it whirl around at the last moment and stab her with its claws flashed through my mind.

"Three!" I gasped.

The girl was Heather, the main character from Silent Hill Three. The reason the image ran through my mind, was because I had made the mistake of charging at it in the game. But what the hell were they called?

"Hey!" I yelled, groaning and snapping my fingers. "Wolverine!"

Not its name, but its head swiveled towards me all the same. It raised its claws and charged at me again. All I did was grin and pick up my hammer. It was just another monster.

I turned the ax blade toward the monster and started to run myself. I remember screaming, my hands clenching the handle, feet pounding against the dirt and my hair:

Being blown softly in the breeze as I climbed the dirt service road that led back to Sanders street. I honestly can't remember that fight. It's a blur of a twitching mass, clanging metal, and a guttural roar mixed with my own pained grunts. I walked away from that fight with several cuts down my left arm, and a bruise above my right eye. I know I won, but other than that I can't remember.

I was tired, and beginning to feel some serious hunger pangs. My throat had long since run dry and began stinging. I had been making it a point to inspect everything I came across. Such as cars, other small buildings, the random torn up bag. By the time my feet hit pavement, I had collected five boxes of bullets and two first aid kits. I guess I wasn't too surprised that I found those items, it being the town it was. Leaving the alley, I passes the bodies of the first monsters we fought and the torn up corpse of the man in the middle of the road. What was left of it.

On my way up Lindsey street, I glanced at my watch. 4:45? Where the hell had the time gone? It was probably from my slow walking. I continued my way up until I hit Nathan Ave, and I could just see the outline of a car through the fog on the far side of the road. As I got closer, the fog parted and I could see it was a Hell Car. I took a defensive stance and readied myself when I saw it was on its side and looked like it had melted into the very pavement. I could see the crashed gates of Rosewater Park just beyond the massive unmoving dead body. But when had that happened?

Suddenly Mook's voice rank out in my skull. _"He wasn't trying to stop you, he shot to help you."_

"Oh yeah." I mumbled to myself. Unfortunately, I had traveled all that way for nothing. Jared and Kate were no longer where I had left them. It was then I heard a shot ring out, as if to answer me. Problem was, I suck at following one noise in these games. It's easier with Surround Sound.

I walked back across the street towards a 7/11, where I thought the sound came from. I pushed the large glass doors open slowly, ready to fight when I heard voices.

"I told you. Now it's just broken, but still in the way."

"Well I didn't know!"

I lowered my weapon and walked into the store. Most of the lights were out, and the place was trashed. I walked near the back where I heard the voices, and found Jared and Kate standing around a door.

"I just don't see how shooting the lock was supposed to open it." Jared said.

"It's a bullet!" Kate replied, throwing her hands in the air.

"And that's a Master Lock. They're notoriously durable. Especially the old ones, like this one."

She sighed, tapping her foot rapidly. "What do I do now?"

"I'm gonna go back to the funnel idea."

"Oh, it's a bathroom." I suddenly cut in, causing them both to jump about three feet away from me. "She has to pee."

"Hey there, Rambo." Jared smirked, regaining his composure quickly to make fun of my new attire. "Nice of you to join us."

I grinned and walked to the door, swinging my hammer as hard as I could at the metal the lock was hooked to. With a bang, the metal broke and the door swung open. I flicked on the light and looked around, knowing that Silent Hill bathrooms could be some of the worst rooms to go in. It was empty; spare a single toilet and a sink.

"Nice. Where'd you get it?" He pointed at my weapon.

"The well we passed." I said as Kate disappeared into the bathroom.

"The well? That was…wait, why were you down there? Where's the Jeep?" He asked, leaning against the wall.

I thought briefly of the twisted, melted mass I used to drive. "A safe place." I said, beginning to empty my pockets of the boxes I had found. As I handed him the bullets and watched him reload, I let him in on my morning adventure. For some reason, I left the knife, lighter and key in my pockets. And I never mentioned Pyramid Head. Partly because I didn't want to admit that, thing was out there. And because I was partially afraid he'd go hunting it down. Jared had a strange obsession with Pyramid Head, ever since we saw him in the movie. I didn't want to see him get hurt trying to see him in real life. And I knew he would go looking, because Jared was braver than I was. I wanted to go home, he was probably having fun.

I thought about that while we waited for Kate to come out. And I hated him for it at that moment. Why couldn't I have been calm and collected? Why did I have to cry, like a child? I was supposed to be strong. I thought I was, anyways.

"I'm sorry." His voice interrupted my thoughts.

"Huh?"

"I shoulda had you wait. Kate's gonna want to know what happened with the Jeep. Now you gotta repeat yourself."

Kate's muffled voice sounded from behind the door. "No I heard him!"

I laughed a little. "It's late in the afternoon. What now?"

Jared shrugged as the door opened and Kate walked out. "I dunno."

"I don't want to go outside." Kate mumbled.

"I'm tired anyways." I said. I stood and walked down to the drink aisle and pressed my hand against the door. Cold. "We can stay here. Clear out some of the floor and make a fire or something." My hand gripped a Dr. Pepper and pulled it out, drinking deep from the bottle. I coughed, gasping as my throat cleared. "At least there's food and stuff here."

"Aren't like, the monsters supposed to symbolize stuff to whoever's experiencing Silent Hill?" Jared asked as he pulled out the same soda for himself.

"Yeah, they represent different fears or something."

"Could random people be symbols too?" He asked.

I froze, watching Kate pull a bottle of something out to drink. I can't remember what. Jared was talking about the girl I had met in the cemetery.

I paused, shaking my head. "They're just people. She just had that face, Jared. Like Amy Lee, or Kayla Gibson." I turned away, placing my boot on an upturned shelf unit. "Dark hair, small eyes. It's common."

"Hey, it's your Silent Hill." He said with a shrug.

"What's that mean? That it's his. Are you blaming Lee for us being here?" Kate suddenly piped up.

"What?" Jared asked. "No. Everyone experiences a different Silent Hill."

"But, we're here together."

"That's not what he means." I said, dropping my empty bottle. "Silent Hill is a place where sinners get punished, and everyone gets punished differently. Like I've sinned differently than Jared, so I'll get different monsters."

She tilted her head at me.

"It just means I'll see things you won't, and you'll see things that I won't." I said. "I can't think of a good example…Gah. Well, like the fog for instance!" I exclaimed, pointing at the window. "Some people won't see the fog like we do."

There was a long pause from both of them. A pause that tells you something is wrong. It was broken by Jared's throat clearing.

"It's…uh. It's not foggy outside."

I stared blankly for a moment. Then shook it off.

"Well, there you go. I see fog, you two don't."

Kate shuffled a few steps toward the windows of the shop. "So you see fog, where I see…." She trailed off.

"See what?" I asked.

She shook her head. "I'm hot, that's all."

We sat around for a while; randomly eating junk food and keeping silent as we could when we thought monsters were near. We did little things, taking turns in the bathroom and finally checking our phones. No service. Around the counter we came across a thick black radio that we turned on, which immediately emanated static. This freaked Jared and I out, because radios making static in Silent Hill meant monsters were near. After 15 minutes, we found it was just on the wrong station. There were no monsters for a few blocks. We could only get crappy talk radio, so we shut it off and tossed it.

The last interesting thing of the night came when we were moving the shelf units away from the fire we made from two shelf units, my hammer smashing them and lighters up at the counter. We uncovered a dead Acid Spitter that was lying on the ground. We thought it was, until it quite suddenly and rapidly skittered away on its stomach. I jumped, and Kate screamed. Jared emptied a clip into it. For a moment, I thought he was acting fast again.

Click, click, click…

What the hell?

Click, click, click…

I turned around. He was still pulling the trigger. My eyes crawled up to view his face, lit up in the glow of the flames. He was terror stricken, just about frozen with fear. The same kid who saved my ass, and took a seriously well aimed shot at a moving Hell Car, had completely lost it when this monster crawled.

"You…alright?" I asked softly.

He drew in a hard sniff, pulled his glasses away from his face and wiped his eyes. "Y-yeah. I wasn't…expecting it." He cleared his throat, and with shaking hands, reloaded his clip. "Caught me off guard, that's all."

It took a few seconds for him to regain his composure. He would keep his distance from the monster until I walked to the bloody corpse and drove the edge of the pickaxe into it and pinned it to the floor. The rest of the night was uneventful. Jared eventually passed out long after Kate, who was in a ball between us. I had periods of fitful naps, but I couldn't sleep really. I kept thinking about how he wasn't any stronger than I was. That, and every so often, I would hear a sound. It was far off, but it still echoed through the night air. A dragging sound, like a large piece of metal scraping along the ground.

Like a big sword being pulled around.

**Day Three**

I watched, as the fog grew lighter. It was morning, but the fog wasn't clearing. I'm not sure why I thought it would. I was sitting on the front counter now, absentmindedly playing with an empty soda bottle. I half grinned, thinking of back to when I was a kid, when I used to play with the weirdest things. Like empty bottles, pretending they were big robot arms. I was one of those kids who took everything apart and played with individual pieces, because the toy never moved as much as I wanted it to.

"I'm defiantly not a kid anymore." I said with a small scoff, and dropped the bottle with a hollow clatter.

The sound of a snort caught my attention. I tilted my head to the left and out the front door, where I could just make out the image of a larger than normal dog growling at the convenience store, seemingly staring right at me. I didn't move, or make a sound for almost five minutes. I simply stared, until it took a daring step forward and increased its growl.

"Shut up." I said, leaning behind the counter and lifting up my hammer from its resting place. But when I had turned back, it was gone.

"You're certainly calm."

I tilted my head back to see Jared coming out of the bathroom, rubbing his eyes.

"What?"

"I don't know. It just doesn't seem like you'd be sitting so relaxed in front of an open door." He muttered, leaning against the counter near me.

I shrugged. "Just valiantly keeping watch. Hell, I'm not sleeping. Someone has to protect you two."

"You came up here to check the register, didn't you?" He asked, staring outside.

"Bone dry." I said with a sigh.

He chuckled. "Safe?"

I shook my head. "Not like we can do anything with money anyways."

We laughed half heartedly at sat around for a few minutes until I caught him staring at me.

"What?" I asked.

He shook his head, like he was coming out of a daze. "Sorry. You seem different, that's all."

That's right, because I didn't belong with them. Had my act dropped drastically? I could only hope he didn't know this Lee any better than my Jared really knew me.

"People tend to change slightly in serious situations." I said.

"Yeah." He nodded.

"Besides," I smirked "It's not like I dropped the humor. Still as funny as ever, even in life or death!" I grinned and slid off the counter, striking a cheesy pose.

He didn't say anything for a moment, just stared at me. "That's what I mean, though."

Huh?

"You're sarcastic, cracking jokes, and putting yourself before us." He crossed his arms. "A week ago you were all business, and conceited as hell. It's almost like you're not the same guy."

My face fell, but I didn't move. Crap. I couldn't even pretend to be what was essentially me.

I was about to say something when a short yawn behind me made me stand up.

"What are you guys talking about?" Kate asked sleepily.

"Nothing." I shook my head.

She mumbled and stumbled into the bathroom. Jared shrugged.

"Then again, she seems like she's tweaked more than usual. And I've never freaked out like that and I've played a ton of horror games." He stuffed his hands in his pockets and started to walk past me. "Maybe I'm just jealous cos you seem to have it together, and I can't pee with the door shut because I'm not too fond of being alone right now." He said with a small grin.

I breathed a sigh of relief and grinned. I give the best imitation of myself. But again, it still shook me slightly that he might see through it. It was bad enough that we were where we were; I didn't want to add the fact that I wasn't who they remembered to it.

After we had woken up and eaten something, we began getting ready to leave. I collected the pickaxe and put it back into the chain, Jared pocketed the spare bullets and helped Kate find small things like food to carry and two extra First Aid kits. We found the usual rack of toys and shit that's in every store like this, and spent twenty minutes turning five bandanas into one big bag with the help of safety pins. Thank god for 7/11's. We filled it with nothing smaller than the spaces between the pins, like the four First Aid kits, food like bags of chips and some candy, and a few bottles of water. Since we each had a spare pocket, we all grabbed an extra drink and placed them there. I grabbed another Dr. Pepper and Jared got so excited that he found MDX in the back of the cooler that he spent another ten minutes searching the store until he found a fanny pack for the kits and candy, just so he could stuff the bag with extra bottles. Kate and I just shrugged and evened it out by dropping two more bottles water in there, and I put another Dr. Pepper in my back pocket. The bag had about eight bottles in it, and we had room for a couple more bags of chips. These weren't including the three bottles of MDX Jared had somehow stored on his person, all while laughing maniacally. When he finally stopped, we asked him why he had taken so many. I mean, I have an addiction to Dr. Pepper, but even I can stop.

"Because I like it." He said. "And tonight, you won't be awake by yourself." Jared said to me.

Well that was nice and all, but I had planned to try and rest when it got dark. But I didn't say that. I just thanked him and took a small bottle of NoDoze from the medicine shelf when he wasn't looking, putting it in the pocket that housed the knife, lighter and key they didn't know about. Kate had apparently put other things from medicine shelf in the fanny pack, but I didn't see and can't remember what she said. She had clicked the pack around her waist, and grabbed the bag off the ground before Jared had a chance to lift it. I guess it was a little heavy, but she didn't seem to care.

"You have the weapons, not me." She said with a smile. "So I'll get this stuff. I can—"

"Do it." I cut her off. "She won't break in half from lugging around some bottles." I said to Jared with a shrug.

"Yeah, but…" He started.

"You wanna trade?" I said with a smirk. "Go on, give her the gun, you take the shit."

He didn't say anything, just kind of glared and turned away. Still, it wasn't right. Not because I believe in chivalry and don't think she can carry it. Fuck that. It was because of what she said before that, about not having a weapon. I put my hand on the cold steel of the pickaxe and watched the start to walk to the front of the store. I shook my head, and switched the hammer for the pickaxe. It was heavier, and pulled down the chain But I just cinched it up some and continued after them.

The sky outside had considerably darkened, and as we started walking down the street I thought it was only me. Right up until Jared asked how I well I could see in the dark and the fog.

"Not great. It just looks like it's going to rain." I said.

"It is." Kate said.

We both turned back, and there she was, hunched slightly and squinting at us. But that wasn't the strange part. She was wet. Not soaked, but noticeably damp.

I checked the pockets of my hood to make sure they were empty before taking it off and draping it over her.

"Why didn't you say anything?" Jared asked.

"I was about to. Neither of you noticed." She said, pointing at us as we stared in confusion.

We were wet, too. Not my shirt, because it had been under my coat. But everything from my sneakers to the shaft of the pickaxe was wet, Jared as well. When I looked back up I could see the drops falling through the fog, and a confused Kate staring back at me.

Dammit. "We've got to get inside." I said with a sigh, and started walking towards the sidewalk.

"NO!" Jared shouted.

I froze, looking back at him. "Why?"

"Just…Um." He shook his head. "Nothing! Let's at least continue down a few blocks. It's not that bad."

He looked at Kate and she shrugged, agreeing. I rolled my eyes and sighed, turning briefly back to the sidewalk. There wasn't anything but a bench in front of me. There wasn't anything on it, and I was fairly positive there were no monsters around. I looked back to where he was in the middle of the road, and he waved me at me to come over to them. I looked back at the bench before turning away finally. "What did you see?" I thought to myself.

We kept walking, occasionally coming across an Acid Spitter stumbling through the rain. We discovered they could be easily taken care of with two shots and a blow to the head from the pickaxe. And if Jared aimed it right, he could make their heads pop open, spraying blood and acid everywhere, with one shot. We tried not to do that, because they tended to make a sick gurgling noise when they fell. Once one of them skittered out from under a car, causing Kate to scream in surprise. Jared didn't shoot, instead took the pickaxe out of my hand and jogged forward, shoving the point into its head twice with a grunt. With a scowl on his face that was dripping with water, he handed my weapon back and we stalked on.

We didn't make it too far up Nathan Ave when we came across where the road bottomed out. I could tell it wasn't in the same place, because the road we started walking down to the left didn't have the apartments on it.

It seemed to get darker as we walked down the block. I started to hear the distant scraping again, but when it seemed like the others didn't notice I kept my mouth shut. Kate had paused, staring at a car by the side of the road. When I put my hand on her shoulder she jumped and muttered something that sounded like, "It won't go away with rain." We continued to the four way at the end of the block, walking in the middle of the road behind Jared until he was suddenly bathed in a dark red light. Shielding our eyes from the light and rain, we could see a stoplight that was stuck on red hanging above us.

I was staring at the light when I heard Jared cock the gun. Tilting my head down, I saw the twitching figure of a Scraper (the creature from the graveyard), blades almost touching the ground, stumbling towards us.

"I wonder if we yield to him." I muttered as I switched my weapons again.

"Blunt force?" Jared asked, gun ready.

I didn't say anything, and flipped the blade end down.

"Oh, well never mind." He grinned.

Before we could start to fight, we heard an unmistakable growling behind us, followed by a gurgle and Kate making a whimpering sound.

"A dog and a Spitter. Fantastic." Jared said, turning around. "Which first?"

I looked back, and at the Scraper that was advancing. There was no first, and I knew what I was going to do. I readied myself, and turned back to them for a second.

"Aim at the dog now." I said.

"What?" He asked.

I whistled as best as I could, getting the dogs attention. "Just aim, and don't miss."

He stared at me for a second, moving his gun toward the dog. Perfect. I turned back to the Scraper and ran forward all of a sudden. My feet pounding on the pavement didn't muffle the sound of Jared cursing and shooting. I had hoped the dog would charge after me, but forgot what happens when you run at unmoving Scrapers. It whipped its left blade up and clipped the side of my head, sending me skidding over the pavement and onto my backside.

"Lee!" I heard Kate scream.

I felt something take hold of my neck and lift me off the ground. Opening my eyes, I saw the leathery, folded head of the Scraper staring at me. My legs dangled in midair, and I kicked wildly but felt nothing connect. It raised its other arm, fist closed, blade out. I pulled at its fingers closed around my throat. As the free hand moved upward I turned my gaze back to its head, where under the folds of tight skin, I could just make out the toothiest grin I'd ever seen.

BLAM!

The creature groaned and its grip weakened. I took my chance and brought my legs up, kicking it square in the chest and freeing myself as it stumbled backwards. Gasping for breath, I could see Jared turning back to face the dog which was getting up again.

Coughing, I stood and pulled out the pickaxe and threw it towards them. It skidded along the ground, clanking and getting the attention of the dog.

"Kate! Grab the—" I started, but was cut off when the Scraper hit me with the backside of its arm and sent my flying farther away from them.

Somehow, I managed to jump to my feet, grab my hammer and wail on my monster. I caught it in the chest and in the head, then swung the axe end down hard, cutting its chest wide open. It gurgled and growled, the wound spraying blood over me. I wiped it out of my eyes in time to watch it stagger and sink to its knees, then fall on its face. I gave it the customary hard kick and started running back to my friends, stopping when I saw they weren't fighting anymore. Jared had the pickaxe and was standing still in the center of the road, between Kate and the dead monsters.

Suddenly I was hit with a wash of disgust from the blood and the quick thought of catching HIV from a Silent Hill monster, and I sank to all fours in the middle of the intersection and threw up until I fell over.

At least I didn't cry.

I groaned and slowly got onto my knees, and looked up to see Jared walking towards me. I shook my head and pointed behind him, at Kate. The Spitter had stood, and was right behind her. Why didn't they see that?

I tried to talk, but threw up again.

"Dude, is something wrong with your hand?" He asked.

"Turn around!" I thought wildly. "Scream, Kate! Something! God…DAMMIT!"

I did the only thing I could think of. I punched my stomach as hard as I could and sprayed vomit at Jared, and then pointed wildly behind him. By the grace of god, he understood, turned around, took aim and shot twice. I relaxed on the ground, until I heard a pop sound, and Kate screaming. I didn't have to look up to know he had shot it in the head, and acid had sprayed onto Kate.

It seemed like I lied on the pavement forever, with my world spinning, and no strength to stand. My focus came and went, and twice I thought I saw the familiar red glowing outline of Pyramid Head down the street. And then it happened. I heard an echoing siren. The air-raid type siren that signaled the transition to Nightmare Silent Hill, where the monsters were worse and the streets were paved with blood. Everything was fading again; buildings were catching fire and freezing over at the same time. Metal was groaning and twisting, and windows began to bleed. The sky became dark, my fog lifted slightly, and a man began walking towards me.

He seemed to materialize from nowhere, and I couldn't see him, just his shadow. Average build, wearing an overcoat and what looked like a hat. He was clearly smoking, and I could hear his heels clicking on the pavement as he got closer. I struggled, but couldn't move.

"Mr. Fox." A deep voice issued from the man. "I have some issues to discuss with you."

Was Deep Throat interrogating me? I struggled to say that, but I couldn't do anything. My whole body felt like it was on fire.

"No sarcasm? Of course not." He shrugged, putting his cigarette out on the ground. "Now's not the time, but you'll stop by my office sometime, won't you? Not like you have a choice."

He walked up to me, into the glow of the streetlight. Try as I might, I couldn't look up at his face. He leaned over, and I felt my back pocket move.

"My card." He said. "Do try and wash up first, boy. We'll have special guests."

And in a flash, it was all gone. Everything was, as normal as it could be. My fog was back, it was lighter out, and rain was splashing my face. The buildings and roads were fine, and I was flat on my back with Kate and Jared hovering over me.

"I honestly can't tell where his blood begins and the monsters ends. Hand me the gauze." She said.

"Yeah." Jared answered. "Is he still bugging out? His pupils just seriously dilated. Is that a good thing?"

"It might mean he snapped out and is adjusting to the light. Or that he's having a seizure, I don't know, I'm not a doctor!"

She had bandages on her forehead, and Jared had Band-Aids up and down his left arm. We all had gotten hurt.

"There." She said, leaning back. "I covered his head wound and cleaned the scrapes on his arms."

"Should we bandage them?" Jared asked.

"It'll use up the second kit if we did."

"Then don't." I said. "I usually don't cover my cuts."

They both jumped at my voice. "Are you alright?" Kate asked.

"I feel like I can't move. Weak. Like my head's in half." I swallowed hard. "I'm fine."

"Bullshit." She said. She pulled out a small bottle of Advil and my soda. "You're taking pain relievers."

"I need like, six."

She looked at me funny.

"No, seriously. I'm bigger than most people. I honestly take six for a headache." I said. She began to argue and I cut her off. "You can't OD on shit like that. Please?"

She gave me eight and I swallowed them all at once. It took a few minutes, but I finally sat up and eventually stood. Questions were asked by all, and answers given. Jared's arm was hurt because the dog would not die, and got close enough to bite him. Kate's forehead was from the acid. She had been covered by my hood, which had basically melted, but still got it on her head. I had a fairly nasty gash on the side of my head, a cut up left arm, a scraped up right arm, and a handprint bruise on my neck. I asked about the siren, but they had only left me alone for five minutes, and hadn't seen anything I had.

I sighed and took a drink, taking the pickaxe back. Kate apologized, and said she had tried to use it. I nodded and slid it into the chain. Neither one would let me leave until I ate a snack bag of Doritos from the bag. It was so I could, replace what I lost. Luckily, I hadn't been lying in my own vomit, but some had gotten on Jared when I was trying to get him to turn. He understood.

After a while we just, moved on. There was noting more to do. The rain was not washing away the interesting smells we all now held. Kate, like burnt flesh. I reeked of blood, and Jared, of puke. We walked in silence until we came to a dead end and another place we all recognized. A place, we never expected to see.

We stared, Jared and I mouths agape at the entrance to the Subway. Why here, of all places? Why now, of all times? There was no way we wanted to enter those hellish halls. To be in that nightmarish place made the bile begin to rise in my throat. But we needed shelter, and we needed to go inside somewhere, but that dank pit? God, please no. Anything but, but THAT.

"You know what would make it kinda better?" I muttered, tearing my eyes away from the white and yellow letters of the sign to look at Jared.

"What?" He asked.

"A dead Daniella in the freezer." I laughed.

He started laughing harder than me, and we both almost fell down in the middle of the road, in front of a Subway sandwich shop.

"Can we go inside?" Kate asked over our laughter.

"Yeah!" Jared wheezed, coughing. "It'll be like going to work!"

I was running out of breath, and it was stupid to make fun of, but it was lightening the mood considerably. "Dude! Dude…you gotta make the cookies, though. I suck at them."

"Only if you put the front together!"

Our laughter echoed through the dark street for quite a while. Eventually, we came to our senses and got to our feet, sighing greatly. Kate was glaring at us, tapping her foot. We just grinned and led her inside. It was dark, and much wider than my old Subway. Even bigger than Jared's old store. We flicked on the lights by the door, and a sick fluorescent light washed over the room and made us wish we had left it off. Because there really was dead people. They were dressed in work uniforms, and scattered about the store. One poor girl had been hung from a fan fixture. The cashier had that oversized bread knife sticking out of his back, as he lay slumped over the register. Another boy was knelt over a mop bucket, his head submerged in black stagnant water. A fourth person was stuffed in the bread oven. Burnt beyond recognition. And the last was another girl, her headless torso lying in front of the counter, limbs splayed in a suggestive position. Silently I made a comment about her prominent breasts being the reason we could tell her gender.

Kate gasped and turned away from it, Jared stared in awe. And I, made my way towards the back of the store. My hammer lowered, I passed the bodies and walked towards the back of the store.

"Dude?" Jared called.

"I want to see if there's a place where there are no dead."

I walked behind the counter, and stepped into the large back area, flicking on the light switch. It was another large area, with nothing out of place. Except a large black scorch mark in the shape of a human silhouette on the far wall. I ignored it and slowly made my way to the freezer. Jared and Kate entered the back room as my hand was on the handle.

"You just know it'll be filled with more people." Jared said, causing Kate to whimper softly.

"I don't know what's in it." I said.

"Why open it at all?" Kate asked.

"Because." Was all I said. I honestly didn't know my fixation with the freezer. But as I pulled on it, a loud clanging made us all jump.

"H-hello?" A voice echoed from the ceiling. "Is someone there?"

"What the—" I started to say.

"Please! I'm stuck in the vents!" It was a male voice, but it sounded quiet and far away. "There's a panel out front, but I can't get it from here!"

"Jared…" I looked at him.

"Yeah, I got it." He said, walking back out front.

Kate looked up at me. "What do you seriously think will be in there?"

"Hopefully not Danny." I said with a grin, and ripped the door open.

"Kate, come help me with this!" Jared yelled from the front. "And stop mumbling, dude! You're freaking me out!"

Apparently whoever was stuck, was mumbling.

Regardless, the freezer was filled with normal Subway shit. Just a bunch of boxes of vegetables and meat. Ordinary shit. Except for the shotgun lying against a box of lettuce. I lifted the double-barreled gun and the ammunition scattered around it, loading it. I was excited, because I had found my own long-range weapon. There was a loud crash and shouting from the front, but I ignored it. I was focused more on myself. I saw a quick image of my bandaged, blood-spattered self in the stainless steel of the countertop. I sighed and turned my back to it, looking at the far wall. The outline reminded me of the man from earlier, and I reached my hand into my back pocket. My fingers griped a thin rectangle, and I pulled out the card. All it was was a black hat symbol and the letters L F M S printed on a plain white card. Under the letters it said, Specializing in your fears since 1987. It was cheesy, so I shrugged and dropped the card.

I suddenly snapped back into reality at the sound of shooting from the front area. I grabbed my hammer and ran to the doorway, looking out at a new monster. It looked like an Acid Spitter that was badly burnt, three times its normal size, and had full use of its arms. It was slowly crawling out of the wall, near a smashed vent grate. It didn't take a genius to realize the voice calling for help was a ruse to lure people near this, thing. In no time it was free of its prison, and slowly making its way toward Jared and Kate who were back away from it, pausing to shoot and throw random objects at it. I stared, ignoring a low growling sound coming from it, watching Jared empty a clip into the creature, only to have it not falter once. Kate was tossing anything she could get her hands on at it, to less an effect.

It was then I realized the growling sound, wasn't just a sound. It was talking. Not in complete sentences, but it was still muttering. I reached back and grabbed the shotgun, sneaking out front.

"The clock struck midnight, children, when the rapping came upon my door." It growled, gesturing wildly before swinging its great arm down and knocking the hanging girl around like a piñata.

"You should have seen him, lying alone in helpless silence in the night." It continued. "You who are rich and whose troubles are few, may come around to see my point of view. What price the Crown of a King on his throne, when you're chained in the dark all alone."

"Chained in the dark…" I thought. "The Cask of Amontillado?" Was it quoting Poe?

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry!" It paused long enough to swing its arms upward before continuing to advance on my friends.

"That wasn't Poe that time. It's not making sense." I thought to myself as I followed it by creeping around the counter.

"What a piece of work is man? How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!" The growl continued. "Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't."

"What the hell do you want?!" Jared roared over its gibberish, firing another shot off.

The creature stumbled. It was starting to weaken. "That it should come to this! True is it that we have seen better days, but today shall the winter of your discontent."

"I think it wants to kill us!" Jared yelled.

"What? Why?! What the hell did we do?!" Kate screamed. "Make it stop! Make it go away! LEE! HELP US!"

The monster stopped, leaning down slightly, and knocking Kate on her ass with one swing of its arm. "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." It growled.

This was defiantly a bad time to mention; I kinda saw that line coming.

It raised its arm, its fingertips lengthening into horrible claws. I slid over the counter, dropping the hammer and running towards its back.

"Ask not for whom the bell tolls, children…" The monster growled, poised to swipe its claw down on them.

I slammed the pump on the shotgun down, cocking it loudly and pulling it up to aim, catching the attention of the creature. And as it looked over its shoulder, still about to attack, I yelled back at it.

"It tolls for Lee!" I shouted, squeezing the trigger.

There was a thunderous boom throughout the store, and the deep growl turned into a high screech. The monster reeled, and I shot again. Now it had a large hole in the side of its head, and with a crash, tumbled off to the left of them where it remained on the floor, unmoving.

I can't fully remember what happened directly after it fell. In fact, most of my memory of the Subway incident is shoddy at best. I remember Jared and I argued about the use of the shotgun, finally deciding it was a waste to carry with us, and that we might never find enough ammo for it. We left it on the front counter with the dead cashier, along with the remaining shells. Perhaps some other unfortunate soul would find a use for it.

As we moved to leave, we all got struck with a nauseating dizziness and had to rest briefly. It sucked, because we wanted so badly to leave. There was nothing there for us in there, and the gruesome bodies weren't helping. The feeling went away in all of us suddenly, and we charged outside. And almost screamed.

Directly in front of us, was an upturned Hell Car. Next-door was a trashed 7/11. Rosewater Park was across the street. The realization hit us all very hard. We had traveled for almost half the day, and essentially gotten nowhere. Silent Hill had put us back at square one.

Dammit.

Jared cursed loudly and violently threw a half empty bottle of MDX at the dead Hell Car. Kate said nothing, and I walked mindlessly towards the park. I couldn't think, and couldn't sit still anymore. I dragged my hammer on the ground behind me as I stumbled across the street. I wasn't sure what to do, or say, or even feel. A day had just been in complete vain. It was a waste of time, energy, and we had almost gotten killed. I felt cold, but pissed off. What made me even angrier, was knowing there was no one to be pissed at. There was no one to blame, but it still wasn't my fault either. I gripped the hammer, and swung the blunt end into the already dented gate of the Park. At first, I wasn't even aware I had crossed the street, much less attacking the twisted metal gate. I was almost panting as the gate crumpled inward and fell to the ground. Still almost running off autopilot, I walked inside alone.

I wasn't stupid, but I was acting like it right now. In horror games, or movies, there's a reason people die. It's because their emotions get the better of them, be it by getting scared or even the rare pissed off. Scare factors work because they force your body to exhaust adrenaline. When you get scared, you release that drug to calm you down but to also add energy. Problem is, a lot of people can't think or function when this happens and they make mistakes. Fatal ones. People who use scare factors count on this. It's worse if you get pissed off. People who get scared and emotional are a small percentage more likely to save themselves at the last second by doing something drastic. People who get mad don't think at all. They just attack. I'm one of those people.

If you've ever played a horror game, you know to just relax and remember that you really can't get hurt or die if you can keep your wits and figure out what to do. You don't go looking for a monster because you're upset that you wasted some time. Like I did.

Except I couldn't find anything in Rosewater Park, at first. As I walked around the brick-walled maze, my weapon on my shoulder, I couldn't find a thing. It was one of those rare moments where you know what you're doing, but you don't know why. I wanted to sneak up on some random Acid Spitter, or crush some wayward Dog. Hell, I'd fight three Scrapers if I could just find them. But the fog was increasing now, and I couldn't see as well. I was surprised, because it had been lifting ever so slowly all day. Finally, near the south end of the park I came across a dead end, and was surrounded by large brick walls. On the wall in front of me, I could make out the words "You Don't Belong Here" scrawled in what I could only guess was blood. I placed my hand on the words, and heard a distorted scream come from the other side. Like a CD skipping. I grabbed a nearby iron bench and pushed it over to the wall with writing on it and climbed on it. Without pausing to look over the wall, I climbed the top and fell to the concrete below.

"Ugh." I groaned after screwing up my landing and falling on my ass.

I stood, shook myself out of habit and looked around. I had fallen into a Zoo-type area it seemed, but couldn't fully see anything. Twisted remains of animals faded in and out of my vision. I wasn't going blind, but their forms were fading almost like they were ghosts. I shifted uncomfortably as I walked slowly past cages, because it seemed like it was really hot in this part of the part. Suddenly in a cage to my right, a small screaming monkey materialized and grabbed onto the bars. Except, the bottom half of its jaw had been torn away, and the screaming was coming from a second face on its tail. I backed away from the cage and it vanished.

"What the hell…" I muttered, shuffling away from the now empty cage.

I had found a problem, but didn't want anything to do with it anymore.

I half jogged until I came across a set of three broken cages, all in a row. The bars weren't broken, but the looked melted off. Suddenly I felt hot again, and another animal materialized behind the remains of the third cages bars. It looked like a bear version of the dogs, except it had what looked like the top half of one of its cubs protruding from its chest. Wide-eyed, I gripped my hammer and took a step away from it as it gurgled and growled at me.

"LEE!"

"What?" I said, stupidly turning away from the monster.

It took the chance to smack my in the side with one of its forearms, sending me flying up the stone path and rolling along the ground. I struggled to stand as it took a step out of its cage. But as it did, my fog set in and I felt cool again, and the bear disappeared. What the hell?

"Dude! Get the hell out of there!" I heard Jared yell.

I looked around franticly, and finally saw his and Kate's faces looking at me from over the brick wall to my left.

"Aint gotta tell me twice!" I ran towards the wall only to get sideswiped by a blurry version of the fucked up monkey from earlier. It vanished before I hit the ground, every muscle in my body screaming to get up and run.

Before I could, I heard a loud scream followed by a loud thud beside me. Kate had fallen over the wall.

"It knocked me...down." She groaned.

"What? Are you ok?"

"Yeah." She nodded. "And that did, when it hit the wall." She pointed a yard or so down the brick wall at the bear monster that was still fading in and out.

"I can't really see where it is, though." I said with a grunt, jumping to my feet.

"You can't?" She asked nervously.

My neck popped I twisted my head towards her so fast. "You CAN!?"

"Of course." I thought to myself as the blurry image of the monster reformed in front of me and knocked me down again. "She should have her own monsters, too."

"Lee!" She yelled.

Chest burning, I stumbled to my feet and gripping my hammer. "Where is it?" I groaned.

There wasn't an answer, but I heard a distinct growling sound from behind me. I whipped around with my hammer to nothing, franticly searching the area for a sign of the creature.

"Kate!" I yelled. "You have to tell me where it is!"

She paused, and I could see the look of terror on her face. She bit her lip and then covered her face with her hands. "Uh…L-left!" She finally stammered.

I tightened my grip and swung hard to my left, but my hammer just clanked onto concrete. Before I could stand I felt something collide against my head and knock me down again.

"I meant my left! Dammit!" She screamed.

This wasn't going to work. I pulled the pickaxe out of the chain and slid it along the ground at her, then jumped to my feet and went to her side. She picked the weapon up slowly and stared at me shaking her head slowly.

"You have to help me, hun. I can't see them, and me receiving directions isn't working. You swing, and I'll follow."

"I c-can't…"She shook her head.

"You have to! I need your help, Kate. Please. You have to swing at least once so I can find it, that's—GAH!"

I was cut off by sudden hard pressure on my neck, shoving my back against the wall. The bear blinked in and out of my vision as it dragged me up the wall to its level. I was choking to death, and could hardly even kick my legs at it. This wasn't like when the Scraper had me, it was worse. I held my hand out to Kate pleadingly to do something, but she just stared at me, frozen with fear. I was going to die because she couldn't think rationally anymore.

Somehow, briefly, I managed to grab onto her arm because she was still nearby. My vision cleared, and the fog vanished. The sky grew dark from the black smoke that was rising from the flames that covered nearly everything. Benches were burning, grass and tress were on fire, and even the concrete smoldered in places. The bear was now as clear as day, as well as several other monstrous animals around us that seemed to just be watching me die. Watching, screeching, and howling. Staring at me with greedy, empty eyes that just couldn't wait for me to breathe my last.

BLAM!

The animals stopped making noise, and turned their attention on Jared, who was pointing his gun towards them. Even the bears grip loosened slightly. After a few seconds, he fired again, this time closer to Kate and I. The bear let go and stumbled away, pausing after backing up a few feet. I fell to the ground and lost my grip on Kate and with a flash, my surroundings returned to the fog and half blurred out images of the animals. Coughing and gagging, I staggered to my feet and damn near threw Kate up into Jared's stretched out arms. After she was back over and he reached out, I used a nearby bench as leverage, jumping up and running up the side of the wall while using Jared's help to pull me up and over. I tumbled to the ground and found why I think Jared pulled us back over, which was probably for help. A pack of dogs had surrounded the point he had been standing at, growling viciously and waiting for their chance.

"Oh, you just won't let me take a break!" I groaned as I got to my feet and readied the blade end of my hammer.

I was sick of this shit. I raised my weapon, readied myself with Jared, and…

Was sitting with my feet up on a desk in the manager's room in the back of the 7-11. Parts of my memory had faded again. I remembered fighting the dogs, someone screaming, and one of the dogs taking after the sound. Turns out some guy had yelled and caught its attention. A guy in a white and red windbreaker with somewhat spiky black hair was running for his life, but we still had dogs of our own to fight. So before we could do anything to help him, he was attacked by the dog and dragged into the shadows between two buildings. When we finally got away from the park and out into the street where he had been, all that remained was a bloodstain and a small silver Tracfone.

Because Jared and Kate had item collected on their way while they followed me, Jared said he had enough bullets to man the front of the store while I rested some in the back after we had decided it was best to just go back inside the convenience store. So I had spent the past hour in a large leather chair, calmly drinking one of my last sodas and absentmindedly eating Doritos again. I had half tried using the computer next to me, but most websites were blocked and I had a bad Internet connection anyways. The phone next to the computer was broken, and the rest of the room held no secrets, let alone anything useful. The place wasn't even wrecked. No blood stains or bodies anywhere. Night had started to fall outside, and I knew Jared and Kate had started a new fire out front.

My neck and head was sore, but I was fine outside of a few minor cuts and bruises. I shrugged off Kate's attempt to bandage them. I hadn't spoken to her since we left the Park, and hardly looked at her. Part of me felt bad, because I shouldn't blame her. I guess I wasn't mad, just disappointed. I needed help and… Whatever.

I was playing with the Tracfone the guy had dropped, getting nothing but a 'Searching… Please Wait" screen no matter how long I waited or what buttons I pushed. I had started hitting random buttons when I heard a light tapping at the door.

"What?" I called out, dropping the phone.

The door softly creaked open and Kate shuffled inside. "I just wanted to see how you were feeling."

"I'm fine." I said with a shrug.

She nodded and set a big blue flashlight on the table. "Jared thought we should each have one. They all have batteries and work fine…" She trailed off.

"Thanks." I leaned forward and picked it up, twirling the bulky object in my hands.

She turned away and started to leave, but stopped when she got to the door. "I'm sorry." She finally mumbled.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because, I froze. Because I'm a wuss."

I shook my head. "It's fine. It wasn't really fair of me to rely on someone else. I can take care of myself. I shouldn't ask you to fight if you're too scared."

She didn't say anything, just opened the door again and walked out.

I sighed and dropped the flashlight on the table. Shortly after she left, I began to get a headache that rapidly increased in pain until I fell out of the chair, clutching my head and screaming. For a few moments I blacked out, and when I opened them I found Jared and Kate standing over me. Except, we were in a different room.

This room was terribly bloodstained, and looked like the walls had patches of skin over them. The desk was now badly beaten up, what was left of it, and the floor itself was gone. A thick metal grate had replaced it, and we could just make out a large fan turning slowly beneath us. It sounded like a factory was all around us, clanging loudly almost in rhythm.

"We need to get out of here." Jared said.

"Why bother?" I groaned, standing slowly. "This is, the Nightmare world, right?"

"I would think so." He said.

"Then there's no point. It'll fade eventually."

"What good will it do to stay here?" Kate said, still surprisingly holding the pickaxe.

I pointed at the door. "Because that's the only way in here. Outside this room, we're monster food. But in here—"

"We can get them first if they try to come in." Jared finished.

"Exactly." I said. "You still got your MDX?"

Jared nodded and held up two bottles.

"You'll need them." I said. "It's gonna be a long night."


	2. Chapter 2

Day Four

I The truth doesn't always have to hurt

I have climbed these walls before  
And I'm not scared anymore  
There's a time to lead and a time to follow  
Because I won't take this anymore (these walls)  
I've climbed these walls before (these walls)   
There's a time to lead and a time to follow (these walls) /I 

CLANK! "AH!"

"Are you ok?!"

"I'm fine." I groaned, stumbling to my feet.

Jared probably couldn't hear me over the Papa Roach song that was playing, but it was obvious I was fine after I buried my axe blade into the head of another Acid Spitter. The creature screeched, and blood spurted from its wound before it fell to the ground dead. I bent over and grabbed my kneecaps for support. Sweat covered my body and my breathing had been reduced to short, rapid breaths.

It had been almost six hours since the air raid siren went off and we transitioned to the "Nightmare" world. In the first two hours Jared had connected his MP3 player to a radio in the remnants of the desk. It looked like he broke them both open and connected the audio wires, but I honestly don't know what he did. He decided to do it because the "Invader Zim" factory type sounds were getting too much to bear, and he wanted to try covering them with music. So far, it had been working.

After another hour of so, they started coming. Monsters, and lots of them. So far, they had only been able to file in, one at a time. They way it worked was I would take out whatever walked in through door, and if I couldn't stop something or if more monsters got past me, then Jared would shoot them. The only problem with this was, I was starting to get very tired.

"Maybe we should switch." Jared offered.

I shook my head. "No."

"You can't keep doing this." Kate muttered softly from near the desk.

I slammed my weapon onto the ground and used it as a cane to stand straight up, turning slightly to merely catch a glimpse of her out of the corner of my eye.

"Yes, I do. I have to protect you both." I said with a rasp in my voice.

"You're not the only one who can take care of himself." Jared suddenly said, rather defiantly.

I turned slowly to face them both. "I don't care. Because, I just don't." I closed my eyes and tried to take a deep breath. "I will get through this, so you don't have to. I will succeed."

"Lee…" Kate said, taking a step backwards.

"I will not succumb to a nightmare. I will not die this time." I continued. Would they catch the last part?

"Dude, you care about us way too much." Jared cut in.

Guess not. "It's my weakness." I said.

I didn't have to turn to know they were starting to file into the room. Monsters were slowly crawling through the door, like a slow motion feature had been turned on. They made no noise, twisting slowly and silently in a haunting and horrifying dance of the dead. I didn't move.

"I will protect the two of you." I pulled my hammer up and held it with both sweat covered and blood stained hands. "And I'll do it with both arms."

I don't know why I spouted off the cheesy Naruto line. Maybe it's because I associate Jared and Kate with that anime. Or maybe it's because I like to use another cheesy line from the same episode the "both arms" line comes from. "At some point, he just stopped feeling sorry for himself.". Maybe I'll always hold myself too high on a pedestal, as the personification of strength. I like to think I am, anyways. Then again, I also like to think of myself as a sort of enigma. Who knows what I really am? I like to think if nothing else, I influence my friends to be a little more dependant on themselves.

"Not alone." Jared added cocking his gun. He walked over to my side, and took aim at whatever was behind me. Before he started shooting, he whispered something. Something that sometimes I still hear in the back of my mind. I remember answering him, but I don't know if he heard me.

Before I could turn around the tiny room filled with the sound of an Air Raid siren going off. Suddenly my head was struck by an incomprehensible piercing feeling. It felt like something was stabbing into my brain via my left ear, and it crippled me. I fell to the ground, clutching the side of my head and screaming. I remember the minute it took for everything to return to normal, felt like a day or pain to me. I remember Jared cheering about us being right, and that the monsters were fading away. But then I blacked out. I remember being in darkness. Surrounded on all sides by a great deal of shadows, except for directly in front of me, where a blurry round object sat on the ground. It looked like a softball almost. I couldn't move, or think about anything except what Jared had whispered.

"Quit trying to be Superman."

And my response.

"If I don't, who will?"

I remember waking up alone in the manager's office. Everything was back to normal, for now. I stood and collected my things, and myself and left the room behind me. Jared and Kate were sitting around the same miserable fire we had started two nights ago. For a minute, I expected them to tell me they didn't remember the nightmare world. No dice. We sat in silence for a while, mindlessly tending to the flames as the sun rose slowly outside. Or so I was told. I couldn't see through the fog still. After about an hour we got the idea to try going back into the Subway. The idea was based of a similar event that occurs in the nightmare version of the Elementary school from Silent Hill One. When Harry, the protagonist, enters the first floor girl's bathroom he'll get transported to the second floor somehow and can only return to the first floor if he goes back into the bathroom.

So we tried that. The Subway was worse off than we had left it, though. The windows were broken, half the restaurant was burnt and scorched, and the words "There was a hole here, but it's gone now", were scrawled in the ashes that coated some of the walls. It was a mocking message to me, or maybe Jared. It came from Silent Hill 2 in a random store James walks into. We didn't feel any different after walking inside. There was no lightheadedness, no dizzy spells. Nothing. After a while, we figured we were wasting our time so we decided to leave. The second we got outside we knew our plan had worked.

I jogged forward until I came to the bodies of the monsters that had attacked up in the intersection before we went into the Subway, and my pool of vomit. I sighed and rested my head in my hand for a moment. We had come from a dead-end after being led to it. I couldn't figure out where to go. It was Jared who first noticed the signs at the left and right of the intersection. On the left was a wooden sign that read "Alchemilla" and on the right one that read "Oakdale". We stared at the sign on the left for a while before deciding to go right. Jared and I knew what Alchemilla was. It was a hospital from the first game, and neither of us wanted to deal with nurses attacking us.

We got in two more fights on the way to Oakdale. Nothing seemed too important as we made our trek down the road. For me, the sky lightened, sending rays of sunlight poking through my fog. Kates fire backed off. Jared remained in the middle of the road, still refusing to venture towards sidewalks. But we hardly paid attention to any of that.

"Oh my…"

"Is that, no way."

The road had ended at a steep hill that bottomed at a parking lot. The concrete was broken and shattered, littered with the skeletal remains of cars that had been wrecked long ago. Like Pyramid Head used to play baseball here, using his sword as a bat and the cars as balls. The lot was a wasteland, and at the opposite side was a tremendous building. I wasn't surprised, really. At the fact that it was a mall, or the fact that it was I our /I mall. I recognized the giant SEARS sign, the layout of the parking lot, and even the Ruby Tuesdays in the distance. The mall we had been led to, was the one we went to every week back home. But that was the strange thing, because it didn't belong in Silent Hill.

I remember Jared began theorizing it with Kate. They talked about why it might be there, if we should go inside, what was in there and stuff like that. But I wasn't really listening. I was staring down at the entrance of SEARS. Past the wastland parking lot, past the broken cars and scattered monsters, and at the shattered glass of the double doors. At the shadowy figure staring back at me, wearing a hat.

"Hey!"

I had jumped the guardrail and started jogging down the hill. I remember Jared cursing at me for taking off, but I was too driven to care. About midway down I tripped and fell, rolling down the remainder of the grassy hill. I skidded across part of the pavement on my ass but jumped to my feet quickly. I ignored Jared yelling if I was ok, Kate yelling what was wrong. The second I stood I grabbed the attention of every nearby monster. Four dogs, five Acid Spiters and what I could only guess at no less than fifteen Scrapers. I heard a screech and looked skyward at the shrouded figures of giant birds, perpetually circling the roof of the mall. My eyes flitted between the shadowed figure in the doorway and the monsters starting to advance on me. Suddenly, I took off running. I ran straight ahead towards the entrance, my subconcious hoping my friends didn't get hurt. But I had questions for this person, and nothing would get between me and my answers.

For the first time in my life, I had a chance to prove that I had agility that made up for me never being able to run well. I jumped over dogs, slid underneath Acid Spitters, and made Scrapers collide with themselves. I vaulted over and through car remains, used sleeping Hell Cars as shields, and full body checked my way through the abandoned lot. The closer I got to the building, the more I noticed the holes in the side of it. And I don't mean little holes, or a few. The place looked like a giant frigging honeycomb.

I had time to see one of the shadowy birds suddenly swoop low and dive behind me. It was headed towards my friends.

I "It must be Jared's monster" /I Mook said in my head.

I didn't respond. I was almost to the door, and the shadow was becoming clearer. I could just about make out a face, my hand on the handle, pushing the door open hard and;

It was empty. There was no one except broken clothes racks and the smoke from a fire near the changing rooms to the far right. I almost screamed in anguish but the doors crashed open behind me and my friends rushed in, slamming the doors shut behind them. Jared, out of breath and shaking slightly, just stared at me and shook his head. I looked away and walked off, headed towards the mall itself. I could hear by their footsteps that they were following me. As I walked, I looked up at the holes in the walls, shining in light from the outsides somewhat. The edges of each hole was smooth, and everything around the holes inside the building was demolished. Crushed, flattened and pushed around. Almost like something had tunneled through that part.

We soon reached the wide threshhold to the mall itself. The first thing I tried to do was break into the store immediately on my right, which seemed to be some sort of backpacking store. I wanted a backpack to put shit into, to make it easier to carry. But no ammount of banging on the glass or doors seemed to break them. Jared wanted to try shooting them, but I pushed the gun away and silently shook my head.

"We need new weapons." I suddenly said, the first words I had uttered in hours.

Jared nodded. "Something else. Anything."

We stood for a moment, thinking. We were overlooking something obvious, but couldn't place our fingers on it.

"What kind of weapons?" Kate suddenly asked.

"Huh?" I looked up. "Well, no place around here has actual weapons. So, like a—"

"Battle axe!" Jared yelled, his voice echoing through the mall.

"What?"

"The, the photo place. It has that suit of armor in front of it, remember?"

"The cheap armor made of tin?" I asked.

His face fell. "Nevermind."

"What about tools?" Kate asked.

"Where?" I tured to face her, but instead of answering me she just pointed back into SEARS.

That's right, the second floor of SEARS has electronics and tools. Duh.

We moved quickly back inside SEARS, heading towards the escelators. We didn't expect them to work, and they didn't. But as a dead comedian once said, "Escelators can never break. They can only become stairs."

"Sorry for the convinence." I muttered with a grin, placing my foot on the bottom step.

We trudged up both sets of steps. Jared and Kate went up the down, while I made my way up the… up set. It didn't take long for the grin to not only get wiped off my face, but also severely beaten. I was faily positive at that moment that I would never grin again, because once again things had gotten slightly fine, only to have it be nuked for showing its face.

Kate whimpered and backed up into Jared, who turned a shade of white I'd never seen before. But then again, he wasn't the only one scared out of his mind. My eyes grew wide and I felt my mouth drop open, and I could feel my body heat abandon me, giving me a horrible cold feeling. At that moment, the generator hummed to life, and I both /I sets of steps began crawling up to the second floor. We all wanted to turn and run, but none of us could seem to move.

Monsters had completely taken over the second floor. Not only were there Scrapers, Acid Spitters and Dogs, but there were also dozens of floating Victims and several Closers. A closer was a female type monster, huge and lumbering with thick club-like arms. It had no real head, more like a large tube that leads to a mouth. The bottom half of them looks like a girl wearing an apron or dress, and stilletto heels. They are from Silent Hill 3. A Victim is one of 21 people killed by Walter Sullivan from SH4. Technically 19. Our victims looked like middle-aged men and women, wearing green shirts and tan pants, or green flowered dresses, respectivly. They all looked the same almost. But the monsters weren't the important part. What was important was;

None of them seemed to notice us.

The escelators finally clicked to a stop, and all of us held our breath. And nothing happened. The monsters kept moving, ignoring our prescence and the fact the stairs had even moved. What the hell?

"I'm actually a little insulted." I whispered, relaxing slightly.

Jared laughed nervously, and Kate didn't move.

"I guess we'll just have to back up slow." I shrugged, and turned around.

Then I froze a second time. On the other side, behind the escelators, was the biggest ammount of dogs I'd ever seen. They were the closest to us, crawling over each other and randomly sniffing the air. Some of them were sleeping around a great fleshy mound that was rising and lowering with what sounded like heavy breaths. I could only assume it was a huge dog, and from first glace it seemed to be three times my size.

It was the first time I had ever gotten a good look at the dogs. I had never noticed they had no eyes. Their skin was pulled tight and folded over those areas. They must rely heavilly on sound and smell.

Kate whimpered again and Jared swallowed hard, turning to look at me for advice.

"It's fine, they haven't noticed us. They can't see." I said as calmly as I could. "Just walk slowly downstairs, and be quiet." I grinned for a second. "And nobody make a smell."

I almost knew what would happen as I started to walk. Mostly because my luck works that way, and partly because I knew he hadn't done it since we got there. But, sure enough…

I Pfffffffttttt /I 

Jared farted.

I tured slowley to face him. "You're kidding me." I said.

"Well now that was just unfortunate…" He said with a nervous chuckle.

There was an uneasy pause as the many dog monsters began growling in our direction, catching the attention of the rest of the monsters. All of them. With no hesitation, they began moving towards our direction. Jared and Kate looked at me for two seconds for guidence, but I didn't have to say a word, because we all knew what we had to do now.

Kate was the first to bolt down the stairs, and the nearest Victim swooped low after her. With a grunt I swung my hammer like a bat, knocking the monster back and into a crowd of dogs. Jared lifted his gun but I grabbed the barrel and shoved it down.

"No! Go now!" I yelled.

"You have got to stop this crap!" He yelled back. "You are NOT fighting off all of these things!"

"You don't know me at all, do you?" I asked with a mutter, leaning back on the hand rail and sliding on my ass down to the first floor.

Jared half ran, half leapt down the rest of the stairs, running past me and muttering something about me being a "self rightous bastard". I jogged after him, trying to keep up. At the entrance to the Mall I turned to look behind me and immediately wished I hadn't. The creatures were tumbling down the broken set of escelators, some just dropping from holes in the ceiling. The only reason they were going slow was because they were all trying to cram through at once, and because they were getting in each others way, they were starting to fight each other. Of course, that meant we were going to get chased by those smart enough to wait or seek other entrances, and the strongest fighters.

"LEE!" Jared yelled.

I shook my head and ran away from the monsters. Kate was already at the first intersection of stores, and Jared had stopped midway for my sake. I was trying to run as fast as I could, but I never had any real form while running, so I stumbled a lot. When I finally got to the intersection, I skidded and turned back away from my friends. I quickly brought up my hammer and swung hard at the locked double doors of the Hot Topic nearby. The doors crumpled easilly and broke inward, and I ran inside.

"What the--, Lee!" Jared stuttered.

I ran back outside, zipping up and ripping the tags off a Tool hoody.

"You've got to be kidding me…" He said.

"I hate just wearing a T-shirt." I shrugged.

"If I wasn't running for my life I might just hug you, you crazy son of a bitch."

"You like Tool?" Kate asked quizzically.

"No." I shook my head.

Before we could say anymore, a reverberating howl cut through the empty hallways of the mall. The huge dog had made its way through, and had paused at the entrance to the mall to let loose a terrifying howl. Frozen with fear, we watched as it prepared to lauch itself towards us, only to have a wall suddenly drop down between us ant it.

A huge dark purple wall had crashed down from the ceiling above the monsterous dog, crushing it with a pitiful yelp. The wall convulsed, and a horrible slurping sound seemed to eminate directly from it. We couldn't fully make out the wall, what with the distance it was away from us. And Kate couldn't seem to see it at all.

"Now's our chance, go now!" I yelled.

"But wait, what—" Kate started.

"No, run!" Jared urged.

"But my eyes won't focus there anymore! Jared—"

"GO!" I screamed, not out of frustration, but because a new army of Victims, Closers, Scrapers and Spitters had began to stumble out of stores and the walls.

We ran full tilt down the main hallway, towards Center Square. Panting and almost out of breath, we pushed onward away from the monsters who were beginning to close in on us. As my friends started moving farther away and the creatures closed in, my foot caught on a piece of rubble, causing me to fall flat on my face. I didn't call out to my friends, just lied motionless on the ground and waited for the monsters to attack me. Except, they didn't. They all ran past me, staying hot on the trails of Jared and Kate.

"Fuck." I muttered as I leapt to my feet.

I ran as fast as I could to the Center Square, frantically searching for them in the wide open space. It was wrecked, like the rest of the mall, the only difference being the huge fountain that now sat where there usually was nothing. I jogged towards it and I heard Kate's scream echo from down the hallway to my right. I started in that direction, but a sudden outburst of gunshots from behind me made me stop. They had been split up at some point. Some Spitters and Victims had surrounded Jared off to my left, and a group of Closers and Scrapers were advancing on a terrified Kate to my right. I stood between them, my head swivilling between both of them. Logic told me to help Kate first, except she was cornered by stronger monsters and Jared was being crippled be the headache effect the Victims gave off to any nearby humans. If I tried to help Jared, we might not reach Kate in time.

"Fuck…" I muttered to myself, looking around franticly.

All I had at my immediate disposal was a fountain, everything on my person, and a McDonalds behind me.

Wait, a McDonalds?

I whipped around and stared at the broken neon sign, my brain moving faster than it ever had before. I ran towards the locked drop-down gate and broke it with the blade edge of my hammer, throwing the gate open. I ran inside, franticly looking for anything that would help. All I found was two giant drums filled with grease from the grills, and a box of raw patties.

"This combo makes sense." I said with a grin, grabbing the box of meat and throwing it out of the store.

I pushed the barrels onto their sides and rolled them to the fountain. I raised the ax edge to break them open, then twirled it around to the hammer side and swiftly struck the middle of the canister. The resulting force and dent forced the top off, spilling grease all over the tile. I repeated the same with the second barrel, and when I was happy with how the grease had spread, I grabbed the box of meat and climbed the stone fountain.

"Ugh…" I groaned after opening it.

The meat was past its prime, and the smell was making me gag. Regardless, I started throwing the rotten gobs of meat in every direction, screaming at the top of my lungs and kicking the fountain. Desperatly trying to get the attention of the monsters, and succeeding, one at a time. Eventually they all decided that either I was more interesting, or that the meat was eaisier prey. Soon they were all stumbling in my direction, some picking up the meat and tearing into it as they focused on me.

I waited.

I waited until some of them started slipping in the grease. I waited until my heart was pounding so hard, I couldn't hear Jared or Kate yelling at me to get out of there. I waited.

And pulled out the lighter that I had found in the mailbox.

And I flicked it on.

"O brothers of rancor, Take up thy lanterns, The truth we shall illuminate." I chanted, standing up as straight as I could on the fountain. "O sisters of rancor, Take up thy knives, To cleave our foes with barren hate!" I yelled in the direction of the Scrapers.

"Through this we seek our just reward;" I said with the lighter held high above my head. "Our goddess's glory be restored!" I yelled with all my might, dropping the lighter to the tiles below.

There was no pause, no time. Only fire. The grease caught fast, sending a short wave of heat and flames across the floor. Not a lot, but enough to catch the monsters on fire. I'll spare the details of their tortured screams. I'll skip the part of them twisting and writhing in agony. But to my surprise, every monster had caught fire, and burned into the tile. I stood on top of the fountain, watching over my destruction, and I laughed. Which caught even me off guard. As if on cue, after the last monster fell twitching to the ground, the fountain turned on, spraying water over the remaining flames. The grease had long since burned off, the only fires remaining being on the monsters themselves. After time, the fountain stopped, and all that remained among the charred corpses was us.

"That, was just about the creepiest damn thing you've ever done." Jared said with a smirk.

"Thank you." I nodded, sliding off the fountain.

"How did you know the lighter would light the grease?" He asked.

"I didn't."

"How did you know they'd follow the meat?" Kate asked.

"I didn't."

"Be grateful for accidents I suppose." Jared shrugged. "What was that you were yelling up there?"

"It was a poem for Tonberry's from Final Fantasy." I said. "It was the only thing that came to mind."

"You're one creepy SOB." Jared said, lifting his hand to help me down.

I let him help me down onto the blackened tile, taking care not to slip in the scorched, oily remains. I hefted my hammer onto my shoulders and began to walk with a somber amble further into the mall. It was a slow walk down the hallway and I noticed my skin felt hot like I had gotten burnt as well, but I wasn't going to check. I didn't care. Jared and Kate were no worse for wear, she had some cuts and he had a headache, naturally, but nothing else was wrong.

It took less than a few minutes to reach the third and final large, open circular part of our mall. Everything was relatively quiet, and as usual, completely demolished. We wandered in-between an EB Games and a Jewelry store and paused. Something didn't seem right. There were no monsters in this section that we could see. But there was an abundance of holes, the same ones from the entrance to SEARS. Large, deep holes that echoed darkness and cold back at us. Almost like…

"Tunnels." Jared suddenly murmured.

"What?"

"They look like tunnels." He repeated, turning to face me. "But what made—"

He was cut off by a tremendous boom that rocked the very ground. With no warning a great purple form shot from a ground hole into one in the ceiling like a freight train. It was obvious it was a creature because of the roar that echoed from it as it rumbled past. Suddenly my mind recalled the huge dog from earlier. This, thing must have eaten it. The beast quickly vanished through the hole, but the rumbling didn't cease at all.

"Let's go, NOW!" Jared yelled, turning towards the nearest exit he could think of.

Kate looked around in a panic frantically. "What the hell just happened?!"

I stood frozen in fear, unable to even blink. I was terrified of anything bigger than me, especially large sea creatures because I couldn't see them below me. This looked like a humongous worm in giant, interconnected tunnels, which was just as bad in my mind.

Jared grabbed my shoulders and shook me, hard. "We need to run! Lee, snap out of it!"

I had time to swallow hard before it exploded through a JC PENNY'S a few stores down, sending shards of glass and metal flying. The great purple worm was just that, a giant worm. It opened its mouth, revealing rows upon rows of jagged teeth and uttering a single tile-shaking roar that reverberated through my entire body.

"What the hell is doing all this?!" Kate screamed over the noise.

"LEE! MOVE YOUR ASS NOW!" Jared yelled.

But I couldn't move. I just stood and watched as the monster closed its mouth and lowered its body to the ground, and began to move forward, towards us. Everything moved in slow motion after that, the worm picking up speed, Kate frantically swiveling her head around in a panic, even Jared shaking me and screaming. I couldn't hear him, every sound had become garbled and unintelligible.

Why was he yelling at me? I had forgotten. Better question, why wasn't Kate looking at the worm? She just keeps clutching her ears against the noise, screaming and looking around. You can't miss the damn thing, it's right there.

Right there.

Right in front of her.

…Oh god.

I snapped out of my daze and grabbed Jared's shoulders, shoving him with all my might to the right and into the jewelry store. I charged forward and threw my arms around Kate and leapt to the right, pulling us both out of the way as the worm shot past. The rumbling and shaking was almost too much to bear, but I managed to shove her fully into the store with Jared. Before he could get a chance to bitch at me for not moving, I climbed to my feet and looked Kate dead in the eyes.

"You can't see the worm, can you?"

She looked at me with a severely puzzled look, and shook her head. "There's a monster out there?"

Jared's jaw almost hit the ground. "You're shitting me…"

"No, which is a problem." I turned away from her and undid the chain around my waist, dropping the pickaxe to the ground.

"What are you doing?" Jared asked as I re-did the chain and slid my hammer into it after wrapping my hoody around my waist.

"Hunting an Alaskan Bull Worm?" I said with a sly grin.

"Dude!" He said with great exasperation.

"Shut the fuck up." I cut him off. "It really doesn't matter if I die." I added in a mumble.

I ran out of the store just as it came blasting out of a Subway down the hallway to my left. It roared again and took off after me as I bolted straight down the hall in front of me. I took off towards a CVS, toy store and a few low rate clothe stores. The monster took a wide turn after me and cleared out the rest of the center square. I managed to duck into the toy store at the last second as the worm barreled past like a bus, shaking the store to its core. I struggled to my feet as it shot into a hole at the end of the hall and within seconds was poking its bulbous head through a hole at the back of the store I was in, making motions like it was sniffing for me. I looked around for something to aid me, my eyes falling to rest on a tilted over moped that the store had at one time been using as a promotional giveaway.

"No way…" I muttered to myself and grinned.

I shot out of the store on the scooter as the worm blasted out behind me, crashing into the far wall instead of a new hole. The engine whined as I pulled back the throttle and raced away from it. A grin swept across my face and I began to laugh loudly, raising my fists and cheering as I sped in between the overturned and wrecked remains of kiosks and benches. I turned around to see the worm struggling to move backwards and finally turn to chase me, but that didn't wipe the grin from my face. What did was when I turned back to see Jared, about 5 yards away, leveling what looked like a rifle at my head.

"FUCK!" I screamed, wrenching the handlebars to the left too hard.

My resulting motion on the scooter caused it to tip, sending me toppling to the ground and the scooter skidding on the ground. I slid and bounced over the tile like a rag doll, eventually coming to rest on my stomach. I heard the scooter tumble away and eventually crash into something hard. Thunderous shots rang out before I could stand, and I thought Jared was shooting at me for a moment. The screech of the worm shook me almost as much as its movements, and the rumbling lightened and ceased very quickly.

"It went back under." I heard Jared curse.

"Fuh?" Was my reply as I struggled to push myself to my feet.

"I only have, like six shots left. Fuck. Can you find another scooter to distract it?"

I shot a puzzled look at Kate as I stumble up. She shook her head and said, "We found it in a jewelry case with a box of bullets.".

The ground suddenly pushed up hard near my feet, sending me flying off to the side. I caught glimpse of the worm shooting skyward and heard Jared fire off three more shots. The creature sunk back into its hole and Jared swore loudly. I jumped back to my feet and ran towards him, shouting.

"Grab her! Grab Kate and run, NOW!"

The tiles started shaking again and began pushing apart beneath me, like it was moving under me. I kept screaming at them to run, even as I felt myself rise and be pulled away from them. It had surfaced under my feet. I was on its back, being rapidly carried back towards Center Square and the front of the mall. The creature roared, its entire body shaking violently as it moved. I grabbed onto what I could only guess were flaps of skin and tried to pull out my hammer, almost losing it and my grip as it suddenly turned sharply into a store and barreled through it. I brought the ax end down on the worm as hard as I could, cutting into its skin and forcing a thick, black blood to blossom forth. The worm screeched, and pressed on, pushing through two more stores and three walls, eventually plowing back into the section we last were in.

"AHHHH!"

I screamed as I was thrown off the back of the creature, tumbling onto the shattered tile ground. The worm was twisting and writhing in place, emitting a terrible screeching. Gasping for breath I looked around franticly for my hammer, backing away slowly. The worm reared back, preparing to lung down at me.

b POW! /b I Tink tink, click. /I b POW! /b 

The shots fired from Jared's rifle tore clean through the fleshy worm body, exploding through the opposite side in a burst of black organs and purple fluid. With a final feeble screech, the monster toppled over, dead.

I collapsed on my ass amidst the debris and wreckage that was once what was left of a mall. Head in my hands, I took deep unending breaths in a sad attempt to regain my composure.

I "This is insane." /I I thought to myself.

There was a loud clunk in front of me that caused me to jump up, almost falling back off my seat of rock and debris. It was Jared, leaning on my hammer with a small grin and shouldering his rifle.

"You should try not to be so courageous." He snickered.

I shrugged and hefted myself to my feet.

"You're not the re—" He stopped mid-sentence, his jaw dropping and eyes widening.

"I'm not, what?" I asked.

"Jared, are you ok?" Kate asked from behind him.

He didn't have to answer. The speakers from an old and forgotten PA system had crackled to life, spewing a broken track of Papercut by Linkin Park.

I "The sun, goe—goes down,

I f-f-f-feel the light betray, betray, betray me…" /I 

The song was cut off by a deep rumbling sound coming from farther up the hallway, towards SEARS and where we first had come from. At first it looked like a dark mass surging towards us, like a flood of choppy black water.

"MONSTERS!" Kate screamed.

She was right. It was a mob of creatures, plowing through the remains of the mall and surging towards us. I grabbed both their shoulders and pulled them back, grabbing my hammer and hefting it onto my shoulders. Before I could act, I heard Jared yell at me.

"NO! Not this time! There's way to fucking many of them, you're coming with us!"

I laughed, jumping off my rock and running past him, yelling over my shoulder, "No shit!".

We all ran as had as we could over the wreckage caused by the worm, trying desperately to outrun the mob of bloodthirsty creatures. Over the roar of the monsters, and our own shortened breaths, we could hear the slow whine of the siren begin to fill the mall.

"NO!" I yelled. I "Not now, please!" /I 

We skidded around a corner, revealing it to be a dead end.

"FUCK!" Jared screamed, punching the wall and creating a hollow thud.

"Wait!" I yelled, jumping forward.

My hands hit the wall, no, not a wall. There was a crease up the middle, but no handles.

"Lee!" Kate screamed. The monsters were closing in rapidly.

I pounded fiercely on the wall. What the hell was it?! There was a keyhole on the wall, but no handle. Automatic doors? The letters EV1 were written above the keyhole. EV?

"ELEVATOR!" I yelled in triumph.

And the key! I had it! I plunged my hand into my pockets, pulling out the small brass key I had found in the shed so long ago. It felt like an eternity ago. Within seconds the key had been turned and the doors shuddered opened, giving me the chance to shove Jared and Kate inside. I was half thrown in by an unknown monster that was struggling to grab me but pushed me inside instead. The doors snapped shut extremely hard, and just like that, all the noise stopped.

The elevator creaked softly as we began to descend under flickering, florescent lights. No one said anything. The only sounds came from our own panicked breathing and the groan of the old elevator. A sudden soft crinkle type sound drew my attention towards the top of the elevator. The metal was peeling and rusting before our eyes, pulling back to reveal an old thin grate in places. The nightmare was starting, following our descent, right into Hell.

Jared backed into the rear wall of the elevator and Kate whimpered next to me, clutching the pickax so hard her knuckles had long since turned white. I stood in the middle of the elevator as calmly as I could, watching the rust and decay wreck the car. I sighed as the crinkling stopped, the last of the metal twisted and bent, giving the elevator car the look that it hadn't been used in decades. The places where metal had been stripped away now showed thick grates that allowed us to see outside the car. The entire shaft was filled with a sick yellowish light, almost like something was burning at the bottom of the elevator. The car suddenly groaned and squealed to a stop, leaving us hanging in midair. The entire car rocked back and forth slowly, creaking gently, and I sighed.

Jared had sunk to the floor of his corner. "What do we do? Why aren't the doors opening? What floor is this?" He asked quietly. He was visibly scared, with good reason.

I shook my head and stared at the ground. "We're not at a floor."

Kate had moved to the doors and was pressing the open button. "Why isn't it working?"

"Because we're not at a floor."

"It should open. It'll open in a second."

"No it won't."

She was shaking. "It will."

"No, Kate." I shook my head.

"Yes it will!" She yelled. "It has to! I won't die in here!"

I didn't say anything.

"How do you know where we are?!" She was in my face now, screaming. "Tell me! Tell me why the doors aren't opening!"

I smiled weakly and raised my head a little. "I don't know."

She groaned in frustration and kicked the doors.

"You know something." Jared muttered.

I turned around. The entire corner Jared was in was one big grate. I didn't say anything. I heard the door ding and begin to slide open. But I didn't have to look. For some reason, I already knew what was going to happen. The doors would open halfway, and something would reach inside and pull Kate into darkness.

The last thing I head was her screaming and the doors closing again. She didn't even get a chance to struggle.

I turned after the doors closed again and started to walk to the control panel, but stopped after I heard a clicking sound. Everyone knows that sound, the sound of a gun cocking.

I shook my head. "Put it down."

"No. Where is she?"

"I don't know." I continued till I reached it, pressing the up button.

"What are you doing?" He asked.

I sighed as the car began to move. "I don't know."

"You're not making sense!"

"I know!" I shouted.

"Just explain it."

I shrugged. "I can't. I'm just doing what I remember."

He tilted his head. "Remember?"

"I have thoughts in my head, like a dream or like I did this already." I moved back to the middle of the car. "I'm just doing it like that."

"How do you know we aren't going to die?"

"I don't, but you trust me."

He lowered his gun. "How do you know?"

"Because you're not stupid. You're on part of the grate, but away from the door. You're sitting on a weak part of the elevator just big enough for you. You think you're either going to fall or get pulled through."

He uncocked the gun. "Maybe, but that doesn't explain how you think I trust you."

"Because you figured I knew it too after I didn't move when Kate got taken away." The elevator groaned to a stop again. "And you decided that if you were in real danger, I would have told you to move."

He had a rather, smug look on his face as the thick chains burst through the grate and wrapped around him. He had believed me, which was good. I honestly didn't know what was happening. I was following thoughts in my head, like someone was talking to me with pictures. I knew that none of us would die, but we would have to fend for ourselves for a while.

As the grate burst out, just before he was taken away into his own set of darkness, he grinned. "You know, you're a lot smarter than our Lee." And then he was gone.

I smirked. "You're smarter than my Jared."

So he figured out at least that I wasn't normal. Cool. But that wasn't as important as what was about to happen to me. The elevator car had started to groan and shudder before wrenching down sharply.

I sighed as the car swung back and forth threateningly. "Just do it." I muttered.

The cable snapped with a terrifying TWANG and sent the car rocketing down. The entire thing was shaking hard, squealing through the shaft. I watched everything outside become a twisting blur as the car sped up, bits of the metal now breaking off. I wasn't even sure I was in the shaft anymore, or if there was a bottom. The right wall broke off completely, followed quickly by the rear and left walls. I shivered from the sudden feeling of being hit with an egg in the back of my head. A cold feeling dripped down my neck and back as the rest of my surroundings shattered and the harsh yellow light from below extinguished, leaving me in darkness.

I awoke several hours later in a daze. I slowly pushed myself to my feet, clutching my head. It felt like I had been hit by a bus. I wearily looked around and suddenly wished I hadn't.

"Ugh…"

I was in a relatively small room. The rear wall was nothing more than a grate with a large fan inside. Except it wasn't moving, and I quickly discovered why. The last person in this room had apparently tried to get through the fan and failed horribly. If I squinted I could see the outline of a door behind the blades. But if I stared long enough, I could see it was just a picture. It was a play on the dead mans desperation to live.

"Nice…" I mumbled, shaking my head. I moved away from th wall, but a flash of red caught my eye.

There was writing on the grate, but I could only see it despite the spaces at an angle. It said, 'iT's FrOm A dIfFeReNt RoOm', in childish lettering. I shook my head and looked at the right hand wall, which had nothing more than six dead and unidentifiable bodies attached to it. I suppressed the urge to gag when I saw that the middle one was the only one who was anything more than a burnt corpse. It was wearing the same clothes as me.

I shuddered and turned away to the left side, which was a giant mirror. At first, I screamed and jumped. Because the first thing I noticed was the corpse's reflection from the wall. It was stilled dressed like me, but in the mirror it had my face, which was twisted in a horrible wide-eyed grin. It took a minute to calm down fully, my heart beating seemed to be amplified in the room. It was just a trick to scare me, but the part that angered me was that it had.

I forced myself to stare at it in the mirror until it didn't bug me so much, despite it being creepy as hell. It wasn't until after I calmed down that I realized it wasn't dressed like me, I it was wearing my clothes! /I 

Everything. My hoody, pants, shirt, work glove, boots and jewelry. I was now dressed back in my sneakers, different and more well fitting jeans, a gray thermal and same color Reebok shirt. There was also a black baseball hat pulled down on my head, which I tore off and threw aside. I now noticed more childish writing on the mirror, 'TaKe BaCk WhAt YoU cAn StOmAcH tO tOuCh'. Without hesitating, I whirled around and pulled my metal ball necklace, my studded and skull rings, the glove and my watch off the dead body. I searched its pockets, pulling out the knife I had found earlier. Holding it I realized that my hammer wasn't in the room and that it was my only weapon currently.

My eyes caught the mirror again. This time the mock of my face was twisted in anger, like I had stolen from it. As I put my things back on my body I stared at the face and yelled at the top of my lungs.

"SHUT UP!"

I looked away for two seconds to pick up the glove that I had dropped. When I looked back up, the corpse had the hat on that I had tossed, and an exaggerated look of shock from when I had yelled.

Was it alive, or just an illusion in the mirror? I had started humming a few bars of a Linkin Park song, PPr:Kutfrom their Reanimation CD. The image in the mirror had begun to move, stopping when I stopped humming. I turned around, seeing that the corpse hadn't budged and that the hat was still on the ground.

I grinned and whirled around. "Why does it feel like night today? Something in here's not right today, Why am I so uptight today? Paranoia's all I got left,"

But before I could continue with the song, the mirror corpse had snapped to life and cut me off. It was singing, and I could hear it.

I "I don't know what stressed me first, Or how the pressure was fed, But I know just what it feels like, To have a voice in the back of my head," /I 

I didn't even pause. "It's like a face that I hold inside, A face that awakes when I close my eyes, A face that watches every time I lie, A face that laughs every time I fall,"

I "And watches everything," /I 

"So, know that when it's time to sink or swim, That the face inside is hearing me, Right underneath my skin!"

At this point the rest of the bodies had began to dance, mocking the other characters from the band. They had all joined in for the chorus, now cutting me out entirely. I didn't care really. My eyes darted between the mirror and the real bodies. On the wall they weren't moving, in the mirror they had come off the wall and were playing instruments. I could hear the song now, their voices weren't broken or harsh, but clear and sounded like the band itself.

I "Hey, yo" /I 

It was a different voice that caught me off guard and I searched the mirror for the source. It was the body from behind the grate. Bloody and beaten, cut up by the fan, it was singing.

I "Here we go again with the pain I feel isn't real, But in my mind, I find myself in, places with names but not faces, My memory races at speeds, Hundred degrees, My soul bleeds, devil must've planted the seed, Now it feels like my back's against the wall, I'm taking the fall, Whenever I call nobody's responding at all, But I don't know who I can trust, The screaming my name, I need somebody to help me out of the frame," /I 

I had laughed at the last line, because they were in a mirror. It was a bad pun. I listened to the dead mans voice change again, watching them all bob and move about like they were actually rapping. 

I "All I'm trying to do is just master me, All I want to do is smoke a blast-to-beat, But something keeps talking to me, Consciously, responsibly, keeps haunting me from dusk 'til dawn, Everything has something for you, That voice inside of your head got you projecting paranoia, Cold sweat shining on your face, Exposing your purpose, And if I ripped off your skin I'd probably find another person, There's nothing worse than trying to bring yourself on back from the dead, So I advise you: listen to that voice in the back of your head" /I 

My eyes wandered to the edges of the mirror as they broke out into the chorus again. It wasn't attached to the wall, but was a part of the wall. I pushed on the glass, and it felt weak. I grinned.

I managed to cut in before my mirrored corpse could sing. "The sun goes down, I feel the light betray me, the sun goes down, it's like I'm paranoid," I traced along to the middle of the mirror. "I feel the light betray me, the sun goes down," I grinned again and looked in at the dancing bodies, singing to a Linkin Park song. "Can't stop what I'm hearing within, it's like the face inside is right beneath my skin!"

On the last word, I reared back and kicked the mirror as hard as I could. My foot shot through it, cracking the entire surface and shattering the rapping dead. I jumped back as the glass showered down around me, a soft tinkling filling the room. When it all had finally stopped, I looked up. There wasn't really anything behind the mirror, just a wall with a key taped to it. I glanced at the front of the room at a door I had never looked at before. There was a huge lock near the handle. It had never occurred to me that I was locked in, or solving a puzzle. I thought I was taking something creepy and making it ridiculous. Laughter echoed from me until I had fallen to the floor.

"I-I probably didn't even do the puzzle right!" I exclaimed to no one.

Gasping slightly, with a grin from ear to ear, I pulled the key off the wall. As I chuckled I unlocked the door and grasped the handle till I was done laughing. Because now I had the feeling it was about to get a lot worse.

The door opened with a loud, echoing creak and closed with a soft click. I was standing in the dark but knew from the sparse light before the door shut that I was in a hallway. I could hear water running, in all different forms. Flowing softly in the distance, the clinking of drops on metal, and the distinct sound of a drain emptying. I put my hands out, touching the walls of the hall and feeling for a light switch. My fingers bumped against something cold and plastic that I immediately flipped to no avail. Of course lights wouldn't work.

"Beautiful." I muttered.

Out of everything that had happened so far, it was a soft click that made me jump. A soft flickering light filled the hallway from a lighter on my left, and right. Now I could see that I was standing on a walkway of sorts, spanning a deep abyss below me. The sides of the hallway were flat and smooth, covered over by a chain-link fence that covered the expanse of the walls, and it took me a moment to realize it was another gigantic mirror behind the fence.

This time the reflection was a shadowy figure with its side to me, holding a lighter that illuminated the hall. On my right, the opposite side was the same reflection. I took a step back but they didn't move. It wasn't until I started walking down the hall that they would follow, keeping pace whether I walked, ran or stopped. That's all there was for a while, just me walking down an endless hallway listening to footsteps that echoed from somewhere other than my own feet. It seemed like I walked for hours on end, never reaching the other side. Just mindlessly plodding along, listening halfheartedly to the sounds of water in the background.

Something made me stop short. "What the hell?" I muttered.

The hallway had started shaking violently. I put my hands on the sides of the hall, almost bracing myself against something I couldn't see. Then, from behind me, the hallway echoed with terrible groaning sounds and a loud scraping. The grated floor had begun pulsating like a heart, thud, thud, thud.

I "He comes." /I 

I whirled around when a light and airy voice had broken the noise. My eyes settled on the reflection on my left, which was now moving on its own accord. It now had panicked movements that were accompanied by short, scared breaths. I moved closer and put my hand on the chain link fence just as what had been making the noise crashed into view behind me and stopped.

I froze, my mouth open, unable to feel my legs let alone try to move. I felt like everything on my body had been chained down right to my eyelids, making me unable to even glance away. Away from the butchers outfit, the bloody limbs, the gigantic sword, or the terrible helmet that was a symbol of every horrific thing in this place.

The labored breathing of the shadow behind the mirror caught my attention away from the monster. The thing looked female, the only part of her illuminated was her large eyes and mouth. Her dark hands grabbed the fence, her face leaned in, and she whispered only one word.

I "Run." /I 

The feeling of being chained lifted in time for m to fall to my ass as Pyramid Head swung his sword in the enclosed hallway. It cut deep into both mirrored walls and through the fences. Glass went flying everywhere followed by bits of metal. The scene moved in slow motion as the sword arced over my head and into the shadow girl's mirror, shattering her in an instant. It was then I leapt to my feet and ran. I ran faster and harder than I ever had before. My feet pounded on the grate, but when I looked back to see if he was still chasing me, I was met with a different sight. The hallway was collapsing. The glass walls were cracking and shattering away, and the grated floors were simply falling into nothingness. I didn't bother with running; I knew I couldn't outrun the breaking hall. I just stood, staring, mouth agape and wondering what would happen next.

A bright light suddenly blinded me, almost knocking me down. I raised my hands and shielded my eyes. Blinking rapidly, I could almost see through the light to a shadowy figure talking to me. Except my ears had been filled with a ringing sound and I couldn't quite make it out.

"I said, what are you doing?"

"GAH!" I yelled, pushing Jared out of my face.

I looked around wildly. I was sitting on a bench in a different hallway, surrounded by Jared and Kate. This hallway was fairly normal, albeit covered in gore and a type of wallpaper that looked like skin pulled tight over bricks. I could see other hallways branching off from the ones we were in, toward different doors and such. Across the hall from me was an open door, and I could see what was previously my corpse puzzle room.

I was dizzy, and mumbling. "Wha—?"

"Did you hallucinate? Freak out from the bodies?" He asked again.

"I don't, think so…" I muttered.

It took a few minutes to gather my bearings. It turned out that they both had similar puzzles to deal with. Kate's key had been stuck to a giant fan that she was forced to shove a dead body through to stop the blades. Jared's could only be found reflected in a mirror, in the hands of a dead body. My puzzle and room, really had come from different rooms.

I told them about my puzzle as we started following a map Jared had found. He laughed, she didn't. But they both agreed that I had probably done it wrong, at least by whoever made its standards. I asked if they had my hammer or seen it, but they hadn't. They had also lost the pickaxe. We only had the handgun, with two new boxes of bullets. But they said that no real monsters had been seen.

From the map we learned we were underneath the mall. There was only one floor, with the main hallway as a giant 'C'. The opposite end of the 'C' was divided by two doors, blocking off the last set of about seven doors. Between us and the divide were another nine doors, which we were systematically trying to open. That was your average exploration vibe, or at least something every gamer does naturally. You check doors and go into rooms, looking for items and weapons. Jared and I were trying to treat this nightmare as much like a game as we could, to take our minds off it.

One of the things we used as a sort of way to, calm down, was to repeat, "And this is Danny.", before trying to open a door. Danny is a dead body that drops down suddenly in a haunted house from Silent Hill Three. A running joke for Jared and I was to say that before something surprising happens, to take the edge off.

The first two rooms were locked. The third was black as night inside except the words, "UsE tHe KeYpAd" on the far wall, illuminated from behind somehow. After we closed the third door, we heard the distinct moaning of an Acid Spitter echoing from somewhere. We ignored it and moved on to the next door, which was locked. The fifth door opened and was even darker than the last if that was possible. I stuck my head inside and caught sight of a numeric keypad just inside the door. A distinct rustling and soft chittering sounds were filling the room. After a few seconds I pulled both of them away and shut the door.

Jared, looking confused, was the first to speak. "Why?"

"Because the door will shut and lock behind us." I said.

Kate shook her head. "But there's a code to get out, right?"

"Yeah, what is it?" Jared asked.

"Oh…" Her face fell.

"Door shuts, leaving us in a room filled with bugs." I said.

"Why bugs?" He asked.

"Because I could hear soft sounds like bugs in there."

"Ah." He nodded.

Moving on still, the next room was locked. The seventh room, however, housed my weapons. They hung, unceremoniously from the ceiling with an upturned lamp shining light up at them. Jared, with absolutely no warning whatsoever, decided to sever the rope holding them up with bullets.

"WOAH! b WOAH! /b " I yelled after the bullets had clearly ricocheted off the far wall and the clanging of my weapons falling had both ceased.

"Sorry." He shrugged.

I sighed and made my way into the room, lifting up my hammer. Kate had already taken the pickaxe before I could get it. Down the shaft of the hammer were the numbers '68349'. Not being able to make anything of it, we left the room. The next two doors were locked, leading us through a set of double doors at the end of the hall.

We were met with another keypad and second set of double doors. A quick test showed we had to put in a code to open the doors. My first guess was the numbers on my hammer. With a loud buzzing and a click, the doors swung open. But they only stayed that way for about thirty seconds. After that, they would swing shut again. After a few tries we learned that the doors would close no matter what we did, and there was no keypad or handles to get back through. We couldn't use a weapon to block them from shutting, because they couldn't be pulled open still. Plus we'd be down a weapon.

"I'll go." I said.

"No." Jared shook his head.

"We don't really have a choice. This is the only place left to look."

"Then I'll go." He said.

"I'm not comfortable having both melee attackers together." I mumbled. Which was code for, 'I don't trust myself to protect her alone'.

"We haven't seen any monsters."

"You have extra bullets."

"I'll only be a few moments. I'll run through quick, come back and tell you what's down there." He said with a smirk. "I run faster than you."

"And you might miss something by running." I added, which wiped the smirk from his face. "You know damn well I have picked up on things you've missed."

"And I've done the same with you!"

"Stop it, both of you!" Kate suddenly shouted. "What is that noise?"

We both heard it. Groaning, scraping and shuffling. Monsters.

"There can't be a lot, just whack them." Jared said quickly.

"Just shoot them in the head before they get through the door."

"Or we could all go through the door." Kate offered.

"It's a dead end, we don't know what's in there." Jared said.

"Like this is any better?!" She yelled.

"Open the door for me, now Jared!" I yelled over her. "Now!"

He didn't move, so I did. I punched in the numbers and walked through the doors. He didn't stop me, just kinda glared after me. As the doors swung shut he turned and faced me fully.

"You better not die you ass!" His muffled voice carried through the door.

"I'll try." I muttered.

The hallway was dark. It was virtually empty except for the doors on my left side. Hesitant, I slowly moved to the first door where a worn bronze plate on the door caught my eye. All I could read was what looked like, 'Char'. I pushed open the door, not going inside but just looking.

A spotlight was shining straight down on a shadowy figure in a chair. The figure was unmoving, and a dark ball about the size of a large softball rested on the floor at its feet. I squinted through the light and noticed two things; one being that the figures head had caved in on the right side, causing gore to be splayed everywhere. And the other was that the ball was very bloody and had a large eight engraved on the front.

"Charlie…" I mumbled.

When I was ten I was a bit on the, insane side. I had a multiple personality for as long as I could remember, and decided to deal with it by killing myself. My method of choice was to step in front of a thrown shot-put in gym class. The effort hadn't killed me, but I never heard Charlie's voice again.

That body had been placed there for me to see. It represented Charlie. I stepped back from the door and moved on, shoving open the next door. Again, it bore a bronze plate that this time said 'Boomer'. Inside this room was a second spotlight on a different shrouded body that was hung from the ceiling.

Boomer was my second multiple personality. He came out when I was 15. I never tried to kill him, but one day he just went away.

The body was swaying gently, the rope creaking softly. I closed the door. Inside the third room was the skeletal remains of a Panda Bear, its heart supported in its chest by barbed wire. It represented Mook, the voice currently in my head. The fourth room supported my theory that these rooms had been placed for me, and me alone.

For the walls were covered in the dead bodies of every girlfriend I had ever had. This room I walked into. Fifteen dead girls stared back at me. Jennifer, who used to hit me. Holly, who burnt me for no reason. Even Beth who was just a massive bitch. Silver, Kay and even Crystal, my current girlfriend, who was nailed to the back of the door. I spent a few extra minutes, apologizing to Silver, Kay and Crystal. And telling the rest how they deserved to be nailed to the wall.

The fifth room held a vast puzzle, and from what I could see from the doorway, would offer nothing more than a few bottles of medicine and three boxes of bullets. Not worth my time or effort, so I ignored it. The sixth housed a Scraper. A badly beaten Scraper that had been chained down. It was not allowed to move, see, or leave the room. But as bad as I felt, I did not make a move to free it. I couldn't shake the feeling it would still attack me.

There was only one door left. After that, I would have to go back, possibly empty-handed. I don't know what I expected to find in there. But there was only one way to find out. I grasped the handle, turned it and pushed hard. Nothing happened. It was locked. I had come all this way for nothing. Exasperated, I punched the door, jarring the wood and causing something that had been wedged in the frame to flutter to the ground. It was a note that I lifted and read aloud.

"The key was in the bug infested room." I mumbled. "WHAT?!" I growled in anger. I could feel my face turning red, the heat rising to my cheeks in a mixture of embarrassment and sheer anger.

"How's this for a key?!" I shouted, smashing the blunt end of my hammer into the door, forcing it to burst open with a bang.

The first thing I noticed was that the room was clean. Clear of gore, blood, or grated floors. There was nothing more than a few pictures on the walls and a large chair and a small desk in the center. I stepped in slowly, weapon at the ready, waiting for something to leap out at me.

"And this is Danny." I mumbled to myself just before the door slammed shut behind me, causing me to jump.

"But you're Mr. Fox." A clear voice rang out.

I lifted my hammer, looking around frantically as the chair suddenly swiveled around, revealing the man who had approached me in the intersection. He was dressed all in the darkest black, wrapped tight in a trench coat that covered his face spare a bloodshot left eye, with a hat pulled low over his brow. He stood, motioning to his chair with a sweeping motion.

"Have a seat."

It sounded more like an order. I sat down, turning the chair as he walked to the front of the desk, facing a window I hadn't noticed before. He moved to the window, placing his hands behind his back

"Do you know why you're here?" He asked quietly.

"No." I admitted.

"Because you need to die."

My muscles tightened, gripping my hammer hard.

He chuckled softly. "I mean to leave. Is that not correct? You need to die to wake, and you must wake to leave."

He wanted me to leave this place? Well, he was right. In order to awaken from my more, realistic dreams I always had died. But why? Why did he want me gone?

"Do you understand the purpose of Silent Hill?" He asked, still not facing me.

"To…punish people for their sins?" I offered after almost a minute.

"Precisely." He said, turning with a bit of a flourish. "You are not the Lee who belongs here, therefore it is pointless to punish you for his sins."

"Uh huh." I nodded, now looking at the pictures on the wall.

Each picture held a different one of the monsters I had encountered. A dog, an Acid Spitter, a Closer and a Scraper. What odd things to keep in an office.

"Although you do need to be punished."

"I'll bet." I said, standing now. "And what about Jared and Kate? You want me to just, leave them here?"

He shook his head. "Once you leave, he will return. They won't tell the difference, and they will continue to be punished accordingly."

"What did they do?" I asked.

"That doesn't concern you."

"What did the other, me, do?"

"That also does not concern you."

"Are you going to kill them all?"

"Again, that is not something that concerns you. You do not belong here. You need to wake up." He said again.

"You know a lot about how I got here." I said.

He nodded slowly.

"Can you tell me how, exactly I got here?"

"You died in your sleep briefly enough to begin passage to a new world, but were brought back to consciousness too fast to continue passage and wound up in a random place." He said with a bit of a drawl, almost like he had said this many times before.

"Do I always replace other versions of me?"

He nodded again.

"What happens to them?"

"They enter your body, sleeping to sustain your dream."

"What?"

He sighed. "You die while sleeping, placing you in a dream. Your dream then replaces you to sleep in your place. He must dream to sustain the world you now reside in. When you die in this world, the switch occurs again. You do not need to dream to sustain this place, thus you are allowed to wake and move on."

"Why does this happen to me?"

"Don't be so self-absorbed." He said. "Thousands of people experience this, nightly."

"Oh."

"Would you please, die now?"

I tilted my head slightly. "How?"

He motioned to the window. "We do not wish to ensue a fight. We thought it be best if you simply jumped out the window."

"How, quaint." I smirked. "Wait, I thought I was underground?"

"You are where you are." He said with no real explanation.

"Who's we, exactly?"

He motioned to the pictures. My monsters? What about them? Then, slowly, the pictures began to bulge and melt away. When they had finished, people stood physically in front of the empty frames. There was a skinny, lanky man with large stitches over his mouth were the Acid Spitter picture was. A very large, bald black man with a never-ceasing grin where the Scraper picture was. A small boy wrapped in a cloak in front of the Dog one, and a one-armed woman with long black hair where the Closer was. Suddenly I realized what had happened.

"You're the Man in the Hat. You're all shadow people from the field, ghosts from my world, aren't you?" I asked. "Everyone's monsters, or separate Silent Hill is represented by something personal. You're mine, aren't you?"

The Hat-Man nodded.

I walked around the desk, moving slowly to the large window. "So you want me to just, walk out this?"

"Yes." He said. "That's all."

Slowly the window opened itself. I stuck my head out, looking at the foggy pavement below. I could feel vertigo setting in, and I grasped the window frame to keep myself from falling by accident.

The man placed his hand on my shoulder. "Sacrifice yourself, so they may go on in peace."

"You're going to kill them." I said softly, staring down at the ground so far away.

He didn't answer.

"Kate didn't really do anything, did she? That's why she can't see some of our monsters, isn't it?"

"Part of our Lee's and Jared's hell, will be watching an innocent die."

"What?" My eyes were watering now. I'll admit it.

"They will be the reason she dies. It is part of their punishment."

"That's not fair." I said.

They laughed. I heard it. Every chuckle, snigger, laugh and giggle. They laughed at me.

"What?" I asked sharply.

"This place isn't fair."

"So what?!" I shouted, whirling around. "You can't just, punish people by slaughtering those who didn't do anything! That's not judgment!"

"It doesn't concern you!" The man's voice suddenly boomed.

I shoved my hands in my pockets as he moved closer. I swallowed hard, and his hands raised and grasped my shoulders.

"You need to go now." He said quietly. "Will you?"

I bit my lip, nodding slowly. "Yes."

"Is there something you'd like to say?" He asked. "We will write it on a wall that they're sure to encounter."

Is that the way it worked, then? The cryptic messages we came across were warnings from the dead? No. Not this time.

I nodded, motioning for him to come closer. He leaned in, moving his covered ear close to my mouth as to hear what I had to say. I put my hand on his shoulder, and lowered my voice as much as I could.

"This is where I belong."

"What—" He started, moving to pull away but stopped short.

My face was blank as the Hat-Man struggled to move, and issued forth a deep gurgling sound from the bottom of his throat. The other shadow people took a step back from me as I shoved the Hat-Man out of my arms. He stumbled backwards, slumping onto the desk and supporting himself with one free hand. The other was clutched around the handle of the folding knife I had pulled out of my pocket and buried in his stomach.

"You realize you've signed your own death warrant?" He said with a heavy sigh, sinking slightly lower.

"I won't let you hurt them. If it kills me, I'll help my friends get out of this place."

"They, are not, your friends!" He screamed. "You, are not special, and you, can not survive this place!"

"Yes I am." I said, hefting my hammer onto my shoulder. "If I wasn't, I really don't think I'd be here in the first place."

The other four shadow people advanced, now with looks of pure anger on their twisted faces. I just laughed. Not in anger, or out of fear, but because an odd feeling of humor washed over me.

"You can't punish me. No one can." I muttered defiantly.

"Kill him." The man growled. "No, better yet, just get him. In fact, get them all. We'll let I him /I deal with them."

Now, I had a problem. Because these were not just monsters, they were what I feared most. All in the same room, and with orders to use force to capture me. But for some reason, I wasn't completely scared. It was mostly because of everything that had happened so far, but partly because they had yet to make a move. They were hesitant, as if I had scared them by being defiant, or were waiting for me to move first. Those weren't the shadows I was scared of. My shadows moved quickly, with no remorse, or mercy.

As if reading my mind, the child shadow suddenly leapt to life. Literally. The short, six-year old size body suddenly rocketed into the air with a screech. I managed to catch the squirming boy with one arm and launched him away, sending him crashing to the floor. The Chaser, which was the shadow with the sewn up mouth, took his chance to materialize behind me without a sound and grab me around the waist, pinning my arms to my sides. The woman stepped forward, letting out an earsplitting scream that crippled me, causing my knees to buckle. With a horrid ringing in my ears I fell limp, which the Chaser apparently wasn't expecting and let go. I dropped my hammer and clutched my ears, making a break for the door. The large man attempted to grab me as I passed but only succeeded in knocking me aside.

With a grunt, I still managed to rip the door open and tumble out into the hallway. I ran as fast as I could, my feet pounding loudly as I hurtled to the end of the hallway. I could only hear my heartbeat, footfalls, and sounds of anger from the shadows as I ran.

I almost didn't see him, standing off to the side, partially shrouded in shadow. By then, everything was moving in slow motion. The Chaser leaned out of the shadows, sticking his leg out. My foot hit the ground, catching his, sending me airborne. I How did he get there? /I , I wondered to myself as I sailed to the ground. I hit the metal floor with a crash, skidding closer to the double doors. But not close enough. Before I could stand, I felt large hands push me back down. I struggled to move to no avail as the woman carried the child swiftly past me, towards the door. I tried to scream, but a large hand clamped over my mouth. I heard the big guy chuckle as the woman reached the door and knocked.

I "Don't open it." /I I thought frantically. I "At least ask if it's me!" /I 

Instead I heard the beeping of the keypad being pressed on the other side. The woman turned and flashed me a horribly smug grin as the door buzzed and clicked open.

I "Have your gun ready! Be ready to shoot! MY Jared would have the gun raised!" /I My thoughts screamed again.

Instead, they were just standing there as the doors swung open. Waiting for me, and for a brief second, smiling. Then they saw it wasn't me. They became confused, and began to question the woman. But she wouldn't answer. She just stood there, grinning, before shifting the child with her only arm and throwing him full tilt in Kate's face with no warning. The shadow child screamed and clawed at her face as she fell backwards, her head hitting the floor with a sickening crack. The child stood, and she didn't move. Didn't breath. Just lied there.

Jared was staring at Kate when the woman moved again, full out punching Jared in the face. Out of surprise, he dropped the gun and stumbled backwards into the range of the Chaser who dropped on his back from nowhere. Jared struggled, proving harder to subdue than Kate and even me. But I didn't get to see his fight, because something hard smacked me in the head and I blacked out.

I woke up what seemed to be several hours later, in a daze. I could hear a pounding sound from above me, but ignored it. The light around me was harsh, and hard to get used to. Eventually my eyes settled, and I could view my surroundings.

I had been chained down to the floor of a circular arena. The ceiling was at least two stories up, and domed over. Everything was spotted with blood, with a harsh yellow light showering over everything. Jared and Kate were behind thick glass that ran around the entire arena, at least one floor up. There were four cages surrounding me, embedded into the walls. One held nothing but dogs, the second housing more Acid Spitters than I had ever seen. The third and fourth held small armies of Closers and Scrapers, respectively. Directly in front of me, near the very top of the ceiling was a full sized picture of Pyramid Head, and on the ground in front of me was the man in the hat, fully unharmed.

"I will give you one last chance to leave here peacefully." He said, hands behind his back. "Or I will let these beasts tear you from this world. Limb from limb."

My breathing had quickened, I could feel my temperature rising again. "Like I'm scared of you."

"You don't have to be. Fear is unimportant. You just need to accept your fate."

I laughed. "Fate? I have no fate. I don't exist to be punished for sins! I an untouchable!" My voice echoed through the enclosure.

"Have you gone insane?"

"Not at all." I grinned. "I just feel so, liberated!" I laughed again and shook the chains that were clamped to my wrists.

The man nodded, and the first two cages opened. "It is a shame you wouldn't take my offer."

"They won't attack me." I grinned.

And to everyone's surprise including mine, the dogs and Acid Spitters did not move forward from their cages.

I didn't know what I had been doing. Part of me was acting crazy for adrenalin's sake. But then, part of me felt good, acting like I was deranged. Like nothing could touch me right now.

Without warning, the last to cages slammed open, but the Closers and Scrapers also stood still. The Hat-Man stepped back, surprised and clearly nervous.

"W-what did you do?" He stammered.

I didn't know. "What's wrong? Scared because you can't control me? Nervous because you can't punish me? Jittery because I'm not?"

"You're nothing!"

"Obviously I'm something or you wouldn't be trying so hard to get rid of me. What's the real reason Hat-Man?! Am I a threat to Silent Hill? Do I bug up the system?! Stop me if I guess it!"

"Enough!" His voice boomed again.

With a soft puff off smoke, he was gone. And in his place stood what previously inhabited a picture, two stories above me.

I just grinned. "Hey there, Jimmy."

Pyramid Head groaned and swung his sword down. I would have died had I not moved. Instead, he severed my chains that banded me in place. I laughed again.

"Jimmy Stone, right? The original Red Devil?!" I yelled, moving backwards slowly. "Weren't you shot in the back of the head by Walter Sullivan?" I'd like to thank Wikipedia for my vast knowledge of everything Silent Hill.

"Just tell me, how it felt, when he removed your heart for the 21 Sacraments, Victim number one?"

With that, Pyramid Head shoved his sword forward in a stabbing motion. But the act was too unorganized and he missed, hitting the wall instead.

"You're like Davy Jones!" I said, walking slowly away from it. "Heartless, mindless, and ugly as hell." I chuckled, my back to him now. "Silent Hill must always have an executioner." The smile faded from my face.

A creaking sound echoed through the arena. I didn't have to look to see what had happened. Strands of chain intertwined with barbed wire had shot forth from the walls, wrapping around his sword and stopping it mid-swing before it hit me. I whirled around and confirmed my thoughts. Something was coming over me. Anger? No. Insanity? No. Whatever it was, felt powerful. It was bubbling up under my surface, giving me control over part of Silent Hill. Just a part. A tiny part. But enough.

"You are not my punisher." I said slowly. "You will not execute me!"

Why was I being so arrogant? Was it because I had the most powerful monster struggling to free the ultimate sword?

"No one judges my sins but ME!" As I shouted the last word, more barbed wire chains sprouted forth, wrapping around Pyramid Head.

"I will judge, you." They pierced his hands and pinned him to the wall.

"I will punish, you." They wrapped around his helmet that had been twisting wildly and echoing a terrible moaning.

"And if it's the last thing I do. I will hurt you for the sins you committed. I will kill you."

I wasn't even talking anymore. These couldn't be my words, my actions. But before I could do anything else, the air raid siren began to go off. Pyramid Head faded away. The monsters melted into nothing. Jared and Kate waited apprehensively for the nightmare to fade. But it didn't fade, disappear, or melt away. It exploded. With a tremendous boom, we were all thrown from our spots in hell, and landed right back in that blasted convenience store. All in a matter of seconds. I struggled to stand after a few moments, only to be lifted up by Jared and pushed into a chair.

"You, start talking." He said.

I looked outside. Night had fallen on our fourth day, and it looked like I was about to spend it awake, explaining myself.


	3. Chapter 3

Day Five 

"Ok, for the last time, can you please take the gun out of my face?"

"No."

"Why not?" I asked again, as if he hadn't told me repeatedly for the last two hours.

"Because I want answers." Jared said through gritted teeth.

His forehead was sweaty, causing his short blond hair to stick in clumps. He was shaking, the pistol never really focused on me. He kept pushing his glasses up on his nose because they were falling from him looking down at me sitting in the chair. It was funny, in a weird way. I had seen him level a flashlight in more intimidating ways than cops do, but he just couldn't keep that gun straight now. Maybe it was because he was upset, I don't know.

"Well?!"

"Well what?" I muttered, half dazed from my thoughts.

"Tell me something!"

"I already said what I know."

"That you're sleeping?" He half laughed. It was a quick, short laugh. "What does that even mean?"

I sighed. "It would take to long to explain, everything to you."

"I have time." He said.

"I don't. I want to go home."

He cocked the gun. "You'll make time."

I stared for a long time at him, and the gun. Dead silent, staring down the end of the metal shat and strangely not worried.

"I just have one question."

"What?" He asked.

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. "Have you really been threatening me this whole time with an un-cocked gun?"

He smirked. "You should have checked."

"How?" I scoffed. "For that matter, how do I know it's loaded?"

Without pausing he tilted the gun to my left and shot a soda can off a nearby counter. The gun was level now, and he had stopped shaking. I think it was because he felt like he was gaining control. For some reason, I didn't like that.

"Well that was only one bullet." I muttered with a shrug. "The clip could be empty now."

Still smirking, he released the clip to show me that it was indeed full of bullets. Without really thinking about it, I swung my foot up and kicked the clip out of his hand. I may be cubby and walk slow, but I always beat everyone in gym at our yearly agility tests. My Jared would probably tell me I could never catch him off guard like that. You never know. Instead, this Jared shoved the gun barrel forward and into my head. When I stumbled back, unable to open my eyes for a moment because of the sharp blinding pain, he had shoved another clip in and cocked the gun again.

"Not bad." He muttered.

I smirked. "Yes it was, don't patronize me." I grunted and rubbed my head.

"You just didn't think far enough ahead."

I chuckled. "You once said I think too much outside of calm situations and that you don't. But once pressure hits, you think faster than me. I never forgot that." I shook my head. "Now every time something extreme happens all I hear is you telling me I don't think that fast, and I can't at all."

I hadn't noticed he was shaking again. He looked almost, enraged.

"I never said that." He muttered through his teeth, his face red.

I shook my head. "No. I guess you didn't."

"Could you please tell us about where you're from?" Kate suddenly piped up. She hadn't really moved since we got back. She just kept staring at the ground.

"It's just like here. Without Silent Hill."

"Go a little deeper." She said.

I sighed. "I, live in Kirkwood. I went to Windsor Central High with you guys, failed a grade and wound up in yours."

"Tell us about ourselves." She said ever so quietly.

"You're, basically the same." I shrugged.

Now she looked up. "But we're different?"

"Kinda. Well, I mean, you seem a lot less…um…" I trailed off, looking for the word in my head.

"Afraid?" She asked.

"Yes!"

She half smiled. "I doubt it."

"No, really. I pretty sure my Kate would be comatose from getting scared so much."

She laughed and Jared pushed my shoulder with the gun. "I don't care about me, him, whatever." He shook his head. "Why are you here?"

"Cos I've been a bad boy?" I offered.

"Tell me!" He shouted.

"I don't know!" I yelled back.

"Stop it!" Kate screamed. "Now, keep going. What about Jared?"

We both stared at her for a moment before I shook my head. "He's no different."

"He must be slightly." She said calmly.

"Nope." I shook my head again. "Same kid who's my best friend back home."

Now he laughed. Outright, and loud. Very loud.

"You're not my best friend. I know you through Travis." He said.

Another friend of mine.

"Wait, then why did you ask me to help you in the first place?"

"Travis was busy, told me to ask you." He said, matter-of-factly.

"Ok, well, there you go." I chuckled. "He knows me better back home."

"Where did you meet Jared?" She asked.

"For the first time? When I flunked science in 10th grade and was put in his class."

"You were never in my science class. Ever." He sneered.

"Well, that explains it."

She stood up and brushed the dust off her clothes. "Can you tell us something you know that we never told our Lee?"

"Why?" I asked.

"We want to know if you're a monster or not." She said.

I froze. Did they really think that? Me, a monster? Well, I didn't exactly have a good rap sheet with them so far.

"I don't, really know much about you Kate." I said. "Regrettably, but you're still a close friend."

"Jared, then."

I shrugged. "You…have a stuffed red dragon in the corner of your room."

"You've seen it before." He shook his head.

"You like butterflies."

"No I don't."

I sighed. "You're afraid of spiders."

"Common knowledge."

I groaned. I was drawing blanks. "You… fall asleep every night to Bill Engvall comedy cds."

That got him. He lowered the gun slightly. Shaking his head, he shrugged. "Big deal, one thing."

"You almost killed yourself because of a girl named Brittanie." I said.

He shook his head. "I've never met anyone with that name."

I must have had a shocked look on my face, because they were looking at me weird.

"So, you've never been up in your field at night?"

"Yes I have…" I muttered.

"But… You don't know why, do you?"

"What?" He asked, clearly confused.

"Sometimes, on full moons, you go up in your field."

He didn't say anything.

"A-and, you can't explain it, but it feels like you're surrounded by thousands of people you can't see, and it feels like you don't belong there. There are five spots where it feels the strongest. In the garage, by the broken vans at the top of the hill, near the fire pit, in the trees and behind you."

He dropped his gun.

"Sometimes you fall, but only when you're walking down the hill. But you fall on your back, like you were forced to your knees and your feet got pulled out. And when you walk down the hill, it feels like your shadow is chasing after you."

He was breathing hard now, looking down at the floor. He couldn't seem to talk, just sputter unintelligible sounds. After a few moments, he muttered something about needing air and almost ran out a door labeled Roof Access. I sighed and dropped back in my chair.

"You really aren't from here, are you?" Kate asked softly.

I shook my head.

"How did you get here?"

"Last thing I remember is falling asleep."

"So, are we like, figments of your dream?"

"I hope not." I said. "I like to think you're real."

She smiled. "Have you ever dreamt like this before?"

I nodded. "A few times. Usually I have to die to wake up."

"That makes sense. Deep sleep often requires shock to lift it."

"How profound of you." I said.

She grinned and began dragging burnt and un-burnt wood into a pile. "Another new quality?"

"I don't want to insult my Kate. I'm just not used to hearing you talk that way."

She laughed. "Well, it could be worse." She shrugged. "I could be an anime dork in your world."

I snorted and laughed so hard I almost fell out of my chair. If she only knew.

"So how did you meet me?"

"When we were little kids I rode your bus for like a week."

"You must be pretty memorable then." She said.

"Not really. Nobody remembers I rode that bus."

"Oh."

I shrugged. "I guess I really met you after I sat at your lunch table and after I became friends with Jared. I'm not really sure."

She didn't say anything, and started to try to light the fire.

I sat in silence for a minute until the wood started burning, then decided to ask a question of my own.

"Say, do you know a girl named Beth?"

Kate rolled her eyes. "Yeah."

"Did I, me, the other me, ever date her?"

She laughed. "No, but not for lack of trying on her part."

"What?"

"She must have tried for over a month to date you. Mostly just, innocuous flirting. You never responded or sent any signals her way. Then she started outright asking. After a week of straight, point-blank 'No's', she finally stopped. Realizing she couldn't have what she wanted, she threw a world class hissy fit."

"Really?" I laughed.

Kate nodded, admiring her fire. "Completely trashed a music room. I remember you just stood there, almost egging her on by sighing constantly and asking if she was done or if she need a nap." She smirked. "I think everyone's favorite was just when it looked like she was done, you said, "If you can't play nice with the other children, we'll have to give you a time out."."

I stifled hard laughter as I stood up, slowly making my way to a freezer.

"Then she called you a child, and you said something about her being a…child molester. I can't remember."

I smirked. "You gotta be careful who you call a child, Beth. Because if I'm a child, then that makes you a pedophile, and I'll be damned if I'm going to stand here and be lectured by a pervert." I said. Thanks Family Guy.

"That's it!" She exclaimed. "Did you do that to her?"

I laughed. "I said it as a joke to her once." I shook my head. "No, I actually dated that mess for six months."

"How?"

I opened the door and touched a bottle of water. Warm. I shut the door and made my way into a dark maintenance room. Ignoring a dead body in the corner, I flicked switches and pushed buttons until I heard a loud click as the backup generator turned on. Afterwards I turned off power to lights and heat, leaving the freezers the only things running. I walked back out, and after I shut and blocked the door, I went back to stand and wait in the eerie light blue light coming from the drink section.

I shrugged. "I dunno. I've dated worse."

"Really?" She said skeptically.

"At least she never hit me." I mumbled.

We didn't say anything for a while. I was waiting for the drinks to cool off some. She was watching the flames.

"Did you ever ask me out?" She suddenly asked.

"God no." I scoffed. I'd rather not re-live that embarrassing memory.

"Ok." She said. "Seems like you've got everything pretty sweet back there."

I shrugged. "I guess so. Great friends, best girlfriend I've ever had, lots of money. Yeah, I do pretty ok in my world."

"Money?" She asked.

"Yeah, I get 15 grand every year." I said.

"That's where your money comes from…" She said slowly.

"You didn't know?"

"You never tell anyone that kinda stuff here." She said. "Where does it come from?"

"It comes from when my parents sued the school cos I got in an accident when I was a kid. Split my skull open when I got hit with a shot-put in gym."

"I remember that." She walked towards me. "There was this big thing about some kid who got hit because the thrower wasn't watching where he tossed the shot-put. The kid was a mess because he almost killed you I guess. I don't know if he ever got over it."

"His name was Greg." I said solemnly. "I feel really bad for it. I didn't mean to hurt him. I didn't pick him, I just wanted to get it over with."

"What?"

"I did it on purpose." I mumbled. "I tried to kill myself."

She gasped slightly.

"I was schizophrenic. I had a second personality named Charlie." I shook my head. "I was sick of waking up in strange places, tired of having strange bruises appear on my body, tired of threatening my family without knowing. So I tried to kill myself by crushing my head with an 8-pound iron ball. I knew I couldn't do it myself, because Charlie wouldn't let me. So I just, ran out in front of Greg and locked my legs."

"Then what happened?" She asked quietly.

"I woke up in the hospital. I never heard his voice again." I shrugged. "Guess I just, flushed him out."

"Wow." She muttered.

A howl echoed outside the store. We peered into the darkness and fog, but no other sounds were made. After a few moments Kate muttered something about checking on Jared, and I was left alone. I wandered away from the fire, shuffling through the food. Stomach growling, I decided to turn my attention to canned goods. I didn't feel like eating stuff that was easy for dead people to get into. I absentmindedly scanned labels until finding beef stew. A pop top can, I didn't need an opener. Lucky.

I took a deep breath and started eating, settling down near the fire again. It was cold. Potatoes tasted like chalk, and the only thing I was interested in was the pieces of meat. The stew smelled strongly of it. A rustling sound caught my attention for a second, but I ignored it. I was too hungry to care. It wasn't until I heard the breathing that I bothered to look up.

A dog was standing about five feet away, head lowered and staring at me. The smell of food attracted it. I looked for my hammer. It was back near the chair Jared had threatened me in.

"That's cool." I murmured aloud. "Puppy want a treat?" I said it a little kid voice, waving the can in front of me.

It didn't waver at the can, only watching me. I sighed and slouched over. Something creaked behind me, but I didn't move. The dog swiveled its head, almost like it was looking behind me. I guess whatever it saw was too far away, because without warning it leapt straight for me.

There was a loud boom from behind me, which was what made me jump so far I actually did fall out of my chair and yell in surprise. Jared had come back down, gun pointed at where the dog had been. He lowered his arm and put the gun in his pocket, turning to me. He had a tired and weathered look on his face, like he had just aged several years.

"Howdy." I offered, not moving off the floor.

He didn't say anything, and looked out the broken windows. He spoke after a few minutes.

"I'll help you get home if you tell me why I go into that field at night."

"I'll try." I said, slowly standing up.

"Good." He sighed, and sank into the chair I had just been in.

Quite suddenly dawn had broken. It was a little shocking to me, watching pale light come from almost nowhere.

"So, we're not real, are we? This is all just some weird dream for you?" He asked.

I was making my way back to my hammer and stopped. "No." I said.

"And I'm getting a little sick of hearing that. We're all real, ok?"

"Ok." He said softly. "So what now?"

Kate had come back down as I lifted my hammer and slid it into the chain around my waist. She grabbed the pickax and stood next to Jared. I grinned and patted him on the shoulder.

"We get froggy on these tadpoles."

He looked up at me, bewildered. "That was terrible."

I shrugged. "Robot Chicken."

He was about say something when Kate got our attention and pointed at something standing near the door. It was a tall, thin woman with long dark hair. Her mouth was twisted in a horrible grin, and she was dressed in strips of white fabric, like a sheet torn into a million pieces. A dark cloth had been drawn tight over her eyes. She didn't need to see. Aside from that, she was missing an arm.

"Isn't that…" Kate started.

Jared stood up so fast that his chair shot out from beneath him. "The bitch from the nightmare!"

She laughed. It was a high-pitched, dry cackle. She turned slowly on her jet black stilettos and began to slowly walk away. She was the human personification of a Closer.

Jared started to follow, but we didn't really need to move to watch her. She was headed for a large building across the street, something we had passed many times. I could see them through the broken windows from where I stood. Four people were standing in separate windows in the building, one with an unmistakable sword. In the front doors to the building stood a single man, un-obscured by shadow, wearing a large black hat.

"Get them!" I yelled, but wasn't heard. Something drowned me out.

The air raid siren.

All around us, everything was morphing into the nightmare. Peeling back to reveal the horrible town of Silent Hill. We stood watching it for a moment, but I was through playing.

"Ignore it!" I shouted. "Them! Get to the building and get them!"

No one needed to be told twice. We hurtled across the street, propelled only by our anger at these people who kept playing with us. Everything else was a blur as we ran, focusing only on the door and the man behind it. We all hit the large, glass doors of the building at the same time, shoving the open with such force that they should have shattered. We skidded to a stop once inside and froze. All at once, everything had stopped.

There was no longer any noise, no siren and we were in a giant, empty room made entirely of concrete. In front of us at the other end of the room were they only two things occupying the room aside from us; a large platform of stone rising out of the ground and a huge industrial fan set into the wall, spinning extremely slowly. If it had been moving any faster we probably would have been knocked backwards.

"Welcome." His voice echoed softly from across the room.

Still covered in his coat and hat with the only thing visible being his bloodshot left eye. We must have been half a football field apart, and still I could see that eye shining in the dim light of that huge room. It looked like he was somehow smiling through his eye.

Slowly, the rest of them came into view. The large man stood off to the side one the platform steps, arms crossed and not moving. The skinny man with the sewn-shut mouth was crouched low just in front of the platform. The kid in his cloak stood opposite the large man, mimicking his position, just his mouth visible under his hood. The woman sat on the steps, sprawled out lazily with her one arm set over her bare stomach. Each of them wore the same toothy grin, as if to project what their leader had covered up.

"Who are they?" Kate asked quietly.

"Those are the reason we go in the field at night." I muttered.

"What?" Jared turned towards me.

"You always said you thought your house was haunted." I said, refusing to take my eyes off the man in the hat. "That there were people in your field, but you could only really feel them at a full moon."

"You'd hear her scream." I pointed at the woman. "Which would make you go out to the garage, cause that's where it'd seem to come from." She giggled lightly, acknowledging we were talking about her. "But she would also stay up in the left corner of the field. When you'd get to the garage, it would seem like a large shadow was blocking your path inside." Now the large man tipped his head down in a nod.

"The chaser," I pointed at the skinny man. "Would follow us around. He could leave the field, go into the house, and even follow us if we'd leave the house. He can't talk I guess, so he'd copy us. Mimic our actions, our stronger thoughts we gave off. He'd watch what we did in your room."

The skinny man had slowly risen to his feet as I talked. A dim spotlight from somewhere above illuminated the platform they stood on above. The light had seemed to grow slightly, focusing on him.

"He kept two copies in your room, on either side of your room. You could hear them, talking to you with familiar voices so they wouldn't bother you. He was the feeling that you get when you turn your back on the field and walk away, that your shadow was chasing you."

Kate gasped as a sickening crack loudly echoed through the room. The skinny mans head suddenly twisted to the left, like his neck was broken. He stumbled forward, shaking, his body issuing more popping and cracking sounds. It was like his bones were rearranging. His nose and mouth suddenly erupted forward, growing longer and pulling at the stitches. His arms and legs were growing thinner, with the skin becoming stretched out and folding over his limbs. The stitches ripped open next, each one popping out with a sickening sound, slowly revealing rows and rows of jagged, bloodied teeth. Skin was stretching over his wild eyes, and the long scraggly black hair that had hung well past his shoulders was now getting sucked back into his head.

"What the fuck…?" Jared muttered, clearly wrestling with whether or not he should shoot the man.

"He's the embodiment of the—" I started to say, but was cut off as one last crack shot through the room like a gunshot.

Kate had screamed as his elbows and knees reversed direction. Snapping loudly in unison like twigs being stepped on and forcing his body to topple forward onto all fours. A dog sat where the man had stood, its mouth open hungrily. It looked like the dogs that had been chasing us all this time, but felt different. Almost like it was more sadistic. Like it would just eat us, but make it wish it had.

"Of the dogs." I finished.

"Why did he show us that?" Jared asked aloud.

In response to him, before Kate or I could mumble a set of 'I don't know', the dogs face began to pop and snap again. It was shrinking now, becoming more human like. But it wasn't changing back to his old face. Instead, when he had finished morphing again, it looked more like Jared without his glasses than anything else. But there was something wrong with the face. It looked darkened, scarred. It was like Jared, but not.

To our horror, it started talking. But not with Jared's voice, with mine. My voice was coming out of the, creature's mouth, crackling loudly like it was being replayed through a bad tape recorder.

"The child never really does much, just stands there, or goes and talks in front of your window." It said. "And then there's Him. He watches over the field, and us. And You. Always you."

The dog started laughing in a voice that was no longer mine. It was high pitched, like nails on a chalkboard. When it was finished it just sat there, staring at us. It was me who finally stepped forward, and talked.

"What the hell are we doing in this building?!" I yelled at Him. The Hat Man.

He didn't move. "What's Silent Hill without a few puzzles?"

Before I could answer, a chain had dropped down directly in front of Kate, clanging loudly and surprising her into screaming. As quickly as it had dropped, it rose up again. Possessed, and snake-like, it wrapped tightly around her middle and carried her skyward and out of our sight. Her screams echoed in the room for a few seconds before cutting off suddenly.

"Kate!" Jared yelled, lifting his gun and aiming it after her.

"I don't think so." The Hat Man yelled calmly.

From off to the left, a thick white substance issued out of the shadows and connected with Jared's hands. It covered the gun and both hands before tightening and pulling him sideways. He grunted and struggled as more of the webbing-like ropes wrapped around his and dragged him sideways into the shadows from where they came. All at once, the sound of his struggling stopped, and was followed by a single hysterical scream that ended abruptly.

I turned towards the Shadow People with a look of horror on my face. He was issuing them orders calmly, telling the large man and the kid to follow Kate, and telling the dog-boy to wait for him where Jared was.

"You son of a bitch!" I yelled as the kid jumped onto the large mans shoulders and he ran off.

The dog trotted away as he answered, and I could hear the mirth in his voice as he spoke.

"And she, will deal with you."

The woman stood up slowly, still grinning.

I screamed in anguish and frustration, and charged. Pulling my hammer out as I ran, I shouldered in and barreled towards them. I was ready to hurt them, to break and smash their faces in, and wipe those grins away once and for all.

"Too headstrong." He said.

All at once I figured out what he meant. The floor was pulling away underneath me, and I was still running. I was on a door that was opening quickly to reveal a dark abyss. In slow motion I started to fall, my momentum carrying me forward still. I was running faster than the door, and I fell into it, my stomach hitting the edge hard and knocking the wind out of me. I released my hammer, which skidded over the floor as I fell. I dropped quickly, the dim light growing smaller before finally flickering out in the distance.

I opened my eyes slowly, groaning loudly. It was dark, wherever I was. It took a few moments to gather my bearings and fully stand. When I did, I immediately wished I hadn't.

I was in a huge circular room, easily ten times the size of the last room I had been in. Everything was bathed in a dim gray light from nowhere, but it was only available to my immediate surroundings. I couldn't see as far as the middle of the room, let alone the other side. I could just hear a radio in the distance, but I was ignoring it. I was on a large metal walkway over shadowy darkness, up against the wall of the room. It was stone, and seemed to stretch forever in all directions. Imbedded in the wall, near the walkway was a set of plugs.

"And me without my lamp." I muttered. "Fuck the lamp, if only I had a blender and some yams. I could make yam schnapps." I chuckled lightly at my own joke.

I sighed and started walking along the walkway. There was nowhere else I could go. Hands in my pockets, and weaponless, I was traversing a bottomless pit. Every so often I'd peer over the railings and into the abyss, expecting to see something.

"Like what, a fucking hang glider?" I said to myself. Nothing stopped me from being sarcastic.

I couldn't even feel anything. There was no wind, yet I was so high up. There was no draft, just dead, un-moving air. It felt damp and heavy, actually. It was very strange. What was stranger was the music. It was increasing in volume steadily as I walked, and I could make out the lyrics.

I "You're too important for anyone,  
You play the role of all you long to be,  
But I, I know who you really are,  
You're the one who cries when you're alone," /I 

"Is that…Evanescence..?" I mumbled to myself. "Where will you go, With no one left to save you but yourself…" I half sang along.

I "You think that I can't see right through your eyes,  
Scared to death to face reality,  
No one seems to hear your hidden cries,  
You're left to face yourself alone…" /I 

An un-mistakable dripping sound suddenly started behind me. I whirled around, but found nothing. Yet I felt cold. Not inside me, but move from the air, sweeping around me. It felt like something was nearby but I ignored it, tore myself away, and followed the song.

I "You can't escape,  
The truth,  
I realize you're afraid,  
But you can't abandon everyone,  
You can't escape,  
You don't want to escape…" /I 

It stopped. I looked around and kept walking. It took a few more minutes to reach the middle of the room. The only reason I knew it was the middle was because there was a second walkway intersecting with the first, stretching to the far walls of the room, or so I assumed. But I wasn't too interested in the walkways because standing directly in the middle of them, right where they intersected, was a woman with a horrible grin.

I knew she had been singing without asking her. She stood defiantly, her one arm on her hips, staring at me. Now I could see her eyes because she had pulled down the rag concealing them. She had almond shaped green eyes and long black hair. I would have thought she was hot, if she wasn't trying to kill me.

"So, this is it?" I asked. "Still on with the whole, 'making me fall to death' thing?"

She tilted her head quizzically.

"The pit?" I asked, motioning over the railing.

She laughed. It was a horrible cackle, at my expense. I had said something stupid, that amused her so much, she didn't stop laughing for a few seconds.

"Not fall." She said, with a dry voice.

Closed inside her hand was a small rock, which she tossed over her shoulder. It immediately hit something that made my blood freeze in my veins. That's when the lights came on. They weren't much, single bulbs imbedded in the far walls, sending pale light washing over the gigantic room. A lot of the room was still in shadow, but I could see clearly what the rock had hit, where it had splashed, and even the ripples that broke the once still as glass surface of the water.

I was surrounded by very, very deep water.

I swallowed hard and convinced myself to move to face her again. I was always afraid of deep water. Because I couldn't see down to the bottom, and there were things much larger than me in the shadows. It wasn't the water, but what might be in it that scared me.

I gulped again and laughed unconvincingly. "That's it then? You're going to drown me? That's a little anti-climactic, hun. Defiantly not your best."

She smirked, and pointed at the water. Fearfully I glanced over the railing, at the spot where she pointed. It was where the rock had gone in, the ripples were still there. I could barely see it, but there was a dim yellow light, deep beneath the surface.

I "Please be a sub, please be a sub, please be a sub.." /I I thought to myself.

The light steadily grew brighter, rising faster toward the surface. I backed away from the railing and fell down as a tremendous force broke the surface of the water. At first glance, I didn't know what it was at first. It was defiantly alive, roaring so loud that the sound waves shook the walkway. The creature looked like a snake mixed with an anglerfish. Its body was rough, encrusted with large bumps that were unidentifiable from where I was. It blinked slowly, a large bubble-like eye slowly focusing on me. It turned slowly, water and bits of the bumps on its skin raining down on the waters surface and the walkway below. I jumped as one of the lumps broke free and crashed nearby on the walkway. It was small and covered in slime, but clear what it was.

"A toaster?!" I yelled.

I flung my attention back to the monster, gleaming wet in the dim light. Squinting, I could just make out what the bumps on it were. Furniture, a broken tv, bits of food, several tires. What the hell?

"Trash?" I yelled at the woman, who laughed again.

"Welcome to the dump!" She cackled again. "You can leave if you kill the 'dogs'."

There was no question about it, I was terrified and she knew it. But seeing the monster made it less scary than if it was hidden underwater. Even if it was three or four stories tall, I was determined not to die. Not at their hands.

With a grunt I got to my feet and started running the direction I had been walking, shoving the laughing woman aside, who chose to yell one last thing after me.

"You should have jumped when we told you to!"

I didn't answer. The monster had jumped the second walkway and plunged into the next quarter section of the water. It was giving chase. Fantastic. The glowing lure on its head gave it away, and I could see it as I ran. It banked towards me, streaking towards the surface. With a tremendous boom it broke the surface near where I was running, and sailed over the walkway, over me. Cold water bombarded me as I tried to run, the walkway shaking violently from the waves hitting in on both sides. My sneakers slid out from under me on a puddle of water and I fell to the ground. I lied there as water and bits of moldy trash pelted down on me. After a minute I peeked over the edge and saw the faint light far below me, beginning to circle back.

"That's cool! That's awesome! Just fucking fantastic!" I yelled as I got back to my feet and started running again. "I come to Silent Hill, and I get a Shadow of the Colossus Boss! Fan-fucking-tastic!!"

I slid on my wet sneakers when I reached the end of the walkway. It was just like the other side, except there was a large metal sliding door with an access panel that had four glowing red lights on the side. I beat on the panel, only to have it flash the words 'Panel System Down, Please Charge Door' repeatedly.

"Charge it how?!" I screamed to no one, kicking my foot at the identical wall outlet that was imbedded in this wall, too. "I see where I need to, but where's the fucking plug!?"

My answer was another boom of the water breaking, which was shortly followed by a loud crack and a low roar from the monster. It had overshot, and crashed into the wall above the door. It was stationary for a few moments, in which I had backed up against the door as much as I could, in fear that if it fell on the walkway it would demolish it. Stunned, the creature pulled away from the wall and fell into the water on the opposite side of the walkway, leaving its body to fall directly on the walkway with a crash. The metal crumpled, but didn't sink into the water. Instead, the monster slid off the walkway and into the water as its dazed body sank like a rock. I stared at the spot where the walkway still was, thinking it to be impossible. The only way there could still be a walkway would be if it reached the bottom.

"Like a…wall?" I asked myself, turning back to the door.

Four red lights that needed to be charged. Four sections of water. I looked near where the water hit the wall. There was a bare set of wires that led out of the water and back to the access panel, with three more sets that came out of it and snaked along the wall and out of sight.

"No fucking way." I muttered, my eyes scanning some of the trash that littered the walkway and surface of the water after coming of the creatures back.

I grabbed a blender off the ground, wiped off the plug and jammed it in the socket before throwing it in the water. The effect was instantaneous. There was a loud cracking sound and the water started to churn, sending bubbles flying to the surface. After a few seconds of this the water calmed, and the coiled body of the dead monster broke the surface once more, only to float there. I could hear the water humming softly as I turned back to the panel. One light was now green.

"Great. So I have to keep plugging shit in? Shouldn't be too hard, dumb thing's dead." I muttered, looking for something else.

I picked up a hair dryer, wiping the plug off on my shirt. Something was kinda bugging me. Why make four sections for one monster? To give it some room, I guess. But then, why make the sections separated?

"Wait, didn't she say, "Dogs"?" I wondered aloud. "Plural, like more than—"

My sentence was cut off as a second monster arced over the walkway I was standing on, and into the pool with its dead brother. There was a series of sparks and crackling, before it too died in the water. Now completely soaked from the last wave of water, I calmly plugged in the hair dryer and threw it into the adjacent pool. It began to spark and hum before a second light changed to green. I grinned as I heard another roar from farther away. But after waiting five minutes for it to jump into electrified water, I guessed it was smarter than the other two, and ran towards the other end of the room. Grabbing the toaster that was still there and a small vacuum, I continued on to run between the last two pools.

I heard it vault the walkway behind me, looking over my shoulder to see the lure rapidly gaining on me. I managed to hit the wall first, jam the toaster in the socket and drop it in the water. It died swimming, and the momentum made it crash headlong into the wall. Without pausing I plugged in the vacuum, which made me jump because it had started to run. I knocked it into the water, but instead of sparking, the vacuum sputtered loudly and died. I was still scratching my head in confusion when the last monster slowly rose from the depths, staring at me.

"I shorted the motor, and it no longer draws power. Shit." I muttered.

The creature roared loudly, the smell of its breath alone almost knocking me down. Without warning it reared back and struck the walkway, almost knocking me into the water. I fell down, getting pelted with trash. Not even a little wanting to go swimming with it, I quickly grabbed a fallen coffee maker and plugged it in, throwing it in the water. The creature screeched loudly before finally falling back in the water, dead.

After a few minute of sitting there and staring at the now still surface of the water, listening to the hum of the electricity surging, I got up and quickly made my way to the door. The sliding door was now open, all four lights bright green. I walked through with a sense of accomplishment, having solved my own puzzle and beaten a boss. Or four.

"Take that.." I chuckled as I passed through the door.

I stopped walking. It suddenly felt like a heavy weight had been placed onto my head, like a lead helmet. I staggered, trying to brace myself on something, anything, instead dropping to my knees on the cold hard ground. My eyelids forced themselves down, obscuring my vision completely. Slowly my ears were filled with a low buzzing which turned to a crackling static sound. The sound encompassed my entire being until it faded away as quickly as it had came, just a few seconds later.

"Dude, get up."

What? I'm not standing?

"Dude? Hey, Kate! There's something wrong with him again."

A thick dark shadow was blocking my vision, and my head hurt. But still I thought to myself. Again? Who's talking? Why can't I see?

"What happened?" Kate's voice.

"He just, face-planted."

Huh? Oh, I'm face down.

With a grunt I pushed myself off the concrete into a sitting position. The semi-bright afternoon light forced me to close my eyes again. I moaned and tried to take in my surroundings. I defiantly wasn't underground. We were in the middle of the road, about half a football field away from what looked like a gas station. There was nothing but fog in any other direction.

"What happened?" I muttered, dazed.

"You tripped and fell." Jared shrugged. "Are you ok? You didn't move for like, five minutes."

"What happened to the building?"

"You mean the big one we were forced to do puzzles in?" Kate asked, her small form now towering over me.

I nodded, looking up at her.

"That was like, 3 hours ago. We escaped and decided to walk up the main road, remember?"

3 hours?! What the hell just happened?

I nodded and mumbled in agreement. I didn't feel like explaining I suddenly couldn't remember what I was doing. I stood and brushed myself off, calmly walking towards the gas station. Then we all heard it at the same time, echoing off in the not too far off distance.

The unmistakable sound of a blade being dragged on the ground.

"Shit!" Jared exclaimed, grabbing my elbow and dragging me toward the station faster. "He just won't stop."

"Well I am, then." I said, jerking my hand away and turning around. I was still weaponless, but I had also killed four giant, albeit rather retarded, sea worms earlier. I felt like I could take on Pyramid Head.

"Come on Jimmy!" I yelled into the fog. Jimmy Stone was the name of an executioner who wore a red triangle hood. Some think that's where Pyramid Head comes from.

"Shut the fuck up!" Jared yelled, pulling me toward the station again "All we have is my gun!"

I shook my head and followed him at a half jog into an abandoned garage that was connected to the gas station. Kate closed the door behind us, cutting off all the light in the room. There was a click as Jared found a switch, flooding the very small and cramped garage with a pale white light. There was a large, beaten to shit white car in the garage with us, with a large metal pipe sticking out of the hood. I immediately recognized it as a car from Silent Hill 2. You removed the pipe for a weapon, a valuable weapon that was used for most of the game. In fact, if you were any good at the game, it would be the only melee weapon you needed.

"What is it?" Jared asked me. "You're looking at the car funny."

I shook my head and circled to the pipe, gripping it in both hands and pulling hard. My feet slid under the car as I pulled, but the pipe didn't move. It was stuck fast. I stood on the front bumper; only half noticing Jared had opened the trunk. Gripping the pipe again I began to pull harder, grunting and trying to twist the metal out. There was a loud squeal and a popping sound, and Jared yelled at me to stop.

"You might crack the radiator or something."

"So what?" I said with a shrug.

"So, we're going to drive out of here." He said, staring at the car.

"Excuse me?" Kate suddenly said, as if she snapped out of a daze. "No we aren't."

"Yeah, did you forget what happened last time?" I asked, shuddering at the thought of my last ride in my Jeep.

He shook his head. "No I didn't."

"Then what makes you think it's a good idea this time?" I asked, stepping down. "We have a pistol, which is only kind of effective."

He didn't say anything, just raised his hands. I hadn't noticed he was holding something until he moved. At first I thought it was a different pipe and some small stones. It turns out it was another shotgun and several boxes of bullets.

"I thought you didn't like shotguns?" I said.

He shook his head again and held his arms out further "It's not for me, it's for you."

"What? I can't drive and shoot a shotgun.."

"I'm driving." He said matter-of-factly.

"I'm better at it." I suddenly blurted out in a defensive, child-like tone. I didn't have confidence in a lot of things; my driving was one thing I did.

"I want to try."

I sighed and shook my head. Kate gently touched my shoulder. "If we're going to die, we might as well go quickly."

I snorted and took the shotgun from Jared. "Let's go, then Xani."

"What did you call me?" He asked.

I didn't answer, just moved to the passenger side, pointing at the pipe as I walked. "What about that?"

It was angled in front of the drivers side of the windshield.

"You can't bend it?" He asked as I shook my head.

Actually, I hadn't tried that. But before I could, Kate went rocketing across the tiny garage, jumping up and throwing her whole weight against the pipe. Despite her small size, the pipe creaked and bent all the way down to the hood before she tumbled to the ground. Jumping up with a flourish, she flashed a thumbs up and climbed into the backseat.

Within seconds we were inside, weapons loaded and the car running. Jared had already lifted the garage door open, and with nothing else blocking us he pulled out and drove in the direction we had been walking. In the rearview mirror, a dark shape could be seen just through the fog. We had been moments away from a Pyramid Head encounter.

"I wonder if they'll come again…" Jared murmured.

We didn't wait long for the answer. We could hear it growing much faster than last time. They were advancing quicker, the Hell Cars. I turned around in my seat to see three had already begun to close in on the bumper, each car emitting that horrible squealing sound as it drove. My window already down, I cocked my gun and leaned out the window. A car was pulling up on my side, moving to hit the back end from the side and make us fishtail out of control. I fired on the car, which did little to nothing. The giant monster faltered and swerved, but otherwise just backed off. A second was coming up on the other side, trying the same maneuver on the drivers side. All too quickly I realized I should have gotten in the back seat. I quickly looked down at the speedometer, 55. I should be ok.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Jared yelled at me.

I was already half out the window, placing my foot on the hood briefly to boost myself onto the roof of the car into a sitting position. "Putting too much faith in my own aim!" I screamed against the wind, but I don't think he heard.

In a sitting position, I shot quickly at the advancing car, and got knocked flat on my back. I wasn't braced at all, and couldn't really get in a different position on the slick roof. As I desperately tried to find something to grip, the car directly behind us accelerated and slammed into the back of us. The car swerved wildly and sent me tumbling backwards off the car. What happened next was a series of tumbling, serious pain and a loud crash. I couldn't tell what was happening, just thinking over and over I would split my head open and die.

Except I didn't. I was kind of sore, but wasn't even dizzy from flipping head over heels during the fall. Confused and dazed, I climbed to my feet, looking around. What my eyes focused on was, well, just kind of weird.

All the Hell Cars, seven of them, had stopped dead in their tracks in the middle of the road. The white car was wrapped around a tree. Jared and Kate were climbing out slowly, seemingly unharmed. We all stared warily at the unmoving Hell Cars for a moment before deciding they weren't a threat.

"They must only move when someone tries to drive." Jared said.

I nodded, watching him start to talk again only to have no sound come out. I tilted my head at him, asking him to repeat himself. Again, his mouth moved, but no sound. This time Kate was talking, only instead of her voice, a low static sound issued from her throat.

Not again.

This time it didn't happen so slowly. It was a very rapid and quick change, almost like my surroundings blinked. When the static sound lifted I adjusted to my new surroundings. Wherever I was, it was dark. A poorly lit hallway, it seemed. I was in a very old house. Confused, I started to wander down the hall, only to have Kate run past me screaming at the top of her lungs. I whirled around in time to have Jared slam into me, knocking us both down in a heap. For a second I was pissed that he had ran headlong into me, but then realized he should be facing me if he had. There was a low grunting and stomping footsteps coming from behind Jared. I quickly learned he had been thrown at me, and I was now staring up at who had done the throwing.

"Oh…fuck.." I muttered.

Pyramid Head let out a low, guttural groan as he towered above us. I tried to jump up and run, but was hindered by Jared. He hadn't moved yet, and was just starting to stir. I grabbed him and tugged him backwards just as he stomped down hard, splintering the floorboards where we had been. The sound seemed to rouse Jared, who proceeded to yell and scramble to his feet, running after Kate down the hall.

There was no question we were faster than him, and similar to the game, if Jared opened fire at his helmet he slowed down even more. But it only helped us for whatever hallway we were currently in. I didn't know where we were, but it seemed like a giant frigging maze. Almost every door was locked except ones that opened into different hallways. Every time we moved into a different hallway, he suddenly appeared behind us. This went on for another five hallways, until I decided I was done playing. I skidded to a stop after a u-bend, turning around and aiming my shotgun I had recently realized I was holding.

"What are you doing?!" Jared yelled.

"It's skipping!" I yelled back.

"What!?"

"The dream! My memory! It's skipping on me! I don't know how I got here, the last thing I remember is crashing the car!" I yelled over my shoulder, watching Pyramid Head lumber around the bend.

"But why did you stop?!" He exclaimed, now running back to my side.

"Because I hate not knowing things! And I blame HIM!" I screamed, shooting directly at his chest.

Pyramid Head faltered from the blast and stumbled. He wasn't hurt, I knew that much. But he seemed surprised almost, like he wasn't expecting me to shoot him. At any rate, he was stunned, so I grabbed the nearest doorknob and turned it hard. Locked. I could feel frustration building, and my rage against stupid puzzles, mazes and my lapsed memory all expelled in the form of a shotgun blast to the door. The handle was obliterated, and the door slammed open from the force.

"What are the fucking odds?!" Jared screamed, staring inside.

The room was empty, spare a single table that held one thing, Pyramid Heads Great Knife. I knew at once that it wasn't coincidence, or good for us. I had broken the unspoken rules and tried to make my own way. In retaliation, Silent Hill had decided to grant its best monster its greatest weapon.

"RUN!" Jared screamed.

"NO!" I yelled, dropping my gun and running into the room.

I grabbed the handle of the knife and heaved with all my might. It slid off the table and onto the ground with a great thud. I couldn't lift it. Pyramid Head stumbled into the doorway. I was going to die. Frantic and panicking, mostly from being thrown into a fight without any warning, I could feel adrenalin surge through my body. I had one good swing in me. I wasn't going to wait for him to get closer, instead getting in front of the sword, lifting the handle high above my head, and tilting the blade skyward. With a loud, angry yell I hoisted the blade over my shoulder with tremendous effort. It was falling through gravity only, not my swing. With one hand, Pyramid Head caught the blade, and jerked the Great Knife away from me. I had effectively given him his weapon.

He effortlessly swung the knife through the air. If I hadn't ducked, I would have lost my head. The blade crashed through the wall like it was butter, sinking into the wall on the hallways opposite end where it remained stationary. I stood slowly, facing the monster, wondering what he would do next.

BLAM!

"LEAVE HIM THE FUCK ALONE!"

Jared was shooting, point blank into his backside. He turned slowly, with the air of someone being bitten by fleas. With a slow groaning sound, I watched him grab Jared and lift him off the ground, pinning him to the wall his sword was stuck in. In a flash, he seemingly produced a spear from thin air, and jammed it straight through Jared's left hand, nailing him to the wall.

For the rest of my life, I will never get the picture of him like that, or his screams out of my head.

Without pausing to think, I ran out into the hall and grabbed the gun I dropped. I armed in once, jammed it right against a bit of exposed neck and fired. Pyramid Head bellowed in pain and stumbled backwards, and I did something I've never seen in a video game. I beat on his helmet with the butt of the shotgun. I swung madly, each swing connecting hard and making a loud clang that drowned out Jared's screaming. I swung until the end of the gun snapped in half and Pyramid Head dropped to his knees.

"I told you once you son of a bitch, YOU DO NOT JUDGE ME!" I screamed, putting my foot to the side of his helmet and kicked with every ounce of strength I had.

He toppled down with another bellow, momentarily incapacitated. Without pause I ran to Jared and yanked the spear out of his hand. He sobbed and sank forward into my arms. Supporting him with one arm, I began to run. Kate was waiting for us at the end of the hall. She pushed the door open and lead the way out of the house, into the ice cold night air. Jared stood on his own know, and without saying a word, we ran. We ran far through an abandoned neighborhood, ignoring street signs and monsters. We ran until our legs ached and our lungs burned. Until we just couldn't anymore. We entered the first house we saw, a one level house set back from the main road. It took a few minutes to learn it was devoid of all life, and then we crashed in a bedroom at the end of the hall.

It seemed pointless to look at the room for some reason. I never knew what it looked like, and I didn't care. I remember the bed clearly, and the sheets from it that Kate ripped up to stop Jared's hand from bleeding. I don't want to get into what we talked about there in that room. It wasn't important, anyway.

"You should get some sleep." I remember him telling me.

It seems so foggy now.

"I don't want to. I just…I have a bad feeling I won't be here when I wake up."

I should have listened to my instinct. I remember we talked a little while longer after that. We talked until my eyes felt heavy, like they were forcing themselves down. I was falling asleep.

I shouldn't have.


End file.
